


The Theseus Syndrome

by ImpendingExodus



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blind Character, Blind Lance (Voltron), Body Horror, Car Accidents, Character Death, Dogs, Gen, Hospitals, Mild Blood, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Horror, Shiro (Voltron)-centric, Supernatural Elements, Violence, blade of marmora, past trauma, urban gothic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-03-23 14:41:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 41,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13789860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImpendingExodus/pseuds/ImpendingExodus
Summary: You shouldn’t mess with the Otherworld. Shiro accidentally does, and pays the price. Now he’s dragged into a spiderweb of agents of the supernatural, street gangs, a blind Elf who can see between worlds, and a looming darkness that creeps in through the gaps in reality. A storm is coming, and the lions have to stop it or die trying.





	1. Black Bird, Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been a long time in the making and I'm so excited to finally be able to share it!! This my project for the Event Horizon horror bang. I got paired with Talvis, who's a super talented artist and has really managed to bring this story to life with their amazing, creepy art!
> 
> Check out the art for this chapter [here](http://ylakerrananimehomo.tumblr.com/post/171249868616/my-first-entry-for-the-vldhorrorbang-a-scene)!!
> 
> Beta'ed (again and again and again and ...) by Silvverx! Thanks so much!

Waking up gasping for breath was nothing new. Waking up gasping for breath in some place other than his own bed was a bit out of the ordinary but not impossible. Waking up, sweating and chilled, cheek pressed to concrete floor, with only blank white walls facing him and no knowledge of where he was or how he got there -- that was a cause for concern.

Shiro slowly rolled over and got his feet under him. Every muscle was stiff and sore, indicating that he’d been here for a while. Which was a bit odd because he usually woke up pretty soon after sleepwalking somewhere... and on the very rare occasions that he stumbled outside while unconscious, someone else always shook him awake in the worst way possible.

A quick glance around showed conclusively that this wasn’t his apartment building -- the walls were cheap cinderblock with paint slapped on them, the lights overhead dim fluorescents that flickered intermittently. The thinly carpeted floor was covered in a thin layer of dust and grime. Even though his own apartment building was rundown and cheap, it wasn’t this obviously disrepaired.

Which meant that he was somewhere unfamiliar.

He was in the middle of a long corridor lined with blank white doors. There was a heavy metal door at the far end, most likely to the outside. Next to him, midway down the hall, was an elevator, its scuffed doors reflecting his own confused expression back at him.

Shiro groaned as he pulled himself to his feet. His sneakers were rubbing blisters on his heels; his t-shirt reeked slightly of sweat from when he’d _intended_ to take a shower last night but had crashed, exhausted, instead. On instinct, his hand went to his neck, where there was a small carved pendant on a cord. The green stone was warm and smooth to the touch and he rubbed his thumb over its comforting shape, a tiny lion with one paw raised to strike, before tucking it back inside his shirt.

Time to find the way out of here.

Now that he was more awake, he became aware of just how dead silent the building was. For an apartment complex, even one on a weekend morning, there ought to have been some people up and about.

Shiro took a deep breath and even the atmosphere was... solid? It smelled like musty paper, the scent in the back of really old bookstores where newspapers were stored with books that hadn’t been touched by human hands in decades. Even though the air looked clear, it felt like he was inhaling lungfuls of particles that choked his throat and made his mouth dry. It would be easier if the hallway was hazy with dust because then he could have blamed it on an unused building -- no one lived here any more, everything was so dead and silent just _because_.

But his mind refused to accept that, even if he kept insisting to himself that it was the only logical answer. Something felt so off about this place that there had to be some sort of bizarre explanation to match the bizarre setting.

“Enough’s enough,” he said out loud. Even though he’d kept his voice at a whisper, it was still too loud in the uncanny stillness, sending rustling echoes away down the hall. There shouldn’t even _be_ an echo in here, he realized, not when the walls were this close and confining.

Once again, best not to think of it. His head was hurting already. Against his chest, the little charm seemed to hang heavier and heavier. Time to get out of here.

He pushed the elevator button. It lit up, but there was no accompanying noise of cables moving or gears engaging. Click, click. The button stayed lit, a dim orange like a dying sunset.

Nothing.

It was fine, elevators got stuck all the time. Maybe someone else was holding it up at a different floor? For some reason, that thought was worse. It had been silent for too long; meeting someone now was going to feel all wrong and just... no. Shiro didn’t want to see anyone or anything, on the whole way back to his apartment. Once he got there he was going to crawl into bed and not show his face until the world started to make sense again.

There was a crash from the end of the hallway. Shiro let out a closed-mouth yelp and flattened himself against the wall, eyes wide as there was a sudden influx of grainy light. Somehow the door at the end of the hallway was open and had slammed back against the wall, reverberating metal that jarred his senses out of whatever calm he’d managed to find.

Right now, the thought foremost in his mind was that someone would have heard that, someone would come to see what was going on.

Abandoning the elevator, Shiro inched his way along the wall, keeping his eyes on the rectangle of light. It didn’t even look like sunlight; the angle was too low, the color all wrong. The last thing he wanted right now was to catch a glimpse of whatever landscape lay outside these concrete walls.

A glance behind him showed that the corridor -- that he was slowly backing along -- was still totally dark. There should have been some light, especially now that the door was open, but _nothing_. As if the darkness was a solid entity that was just waiting to absorb him. But even that would be preferable, at least it would offer some way to hide from whatever would see him in the light.

His fingers trailed along the lefthand wall, feeling the slick surface of cement give way to the raised lip of a doorframe. Closed, like all the others. No doorknob. He kept inching past. Was it his imagination, or was there a silhouette in the doorway now, a shape just slightly less bright than the sick yellow glow spilling in?

The metal door moved under his touch, being wrenched violently open by something he didn’t have time to see. Self-preservation pounded through his head, instincts he didn’t know he had, and somehow his outcry of surprise turned into nothing more than a silent intake of breath. Then he was stumbling headlong into the gray darkness of the room beyond and the door clicked shut behind him.

Just as he was regaining his balance and had time for a lightning-fast glimpse of the room -- deserted, empty, covered with dust and the flapping remnants of curtains that clung around the window like hanged corpses -- he was shoved back against the wall. Shiro lashed out blindly but the other person was too fast, ducking easily under his flailing arms and pressing in uncomfortably close, a hand plastered over his mouth.

Shiro gulped down air but stopped fighting. This didn’t seem to be an attack, not when the person was a foot and a half shorter than him and all their attention was poised toward the closed door. Safer, far safer right now, to play along. He would take a human enemy any day over whatever was walking the hallway outside.

The person backed up, keeping a watchful eye on Shiro, and held a hand to their lips. Shiro nodded understanding and tried to steady his breathing. Now was not the time for a panic attack. It also gave him a moment to take in the newcomer. At this second glance they -- he couldn’t tell their gender for certain yet -- looked a lot less intimidating than he would have thought. Short, slim build, glasses, a large backpack, looking like they’d be more at home in a library or computer lab than whatever the hell this place was.

But on third glance... there was a gun tucked into the back of their waistband. A hunting knife hanging at their side. Runic, maybe astrologic, symbols stitched into the canvas of their bag. Dangerous, but in a quiet way, more for sneak attacks and self defense than outright brawling.

Still more than enough to take down Shiro.

The newcomer’s eyes were still on the door for the most part, their body language crouched and ready for instant action. It made Shiro’s heartbeat pick up again. Of course they were still in danger. This whole world was made of danger.

Shiro crossed the room carefully, avoiding stepping on the debris and loose plaster on the floor, until his back was to the far wall and he was out of sight of the door. The other person gave him a wide berth and kept most of their focus on the door, but as the minutes dragged interminably on, the tension in the room eased. At last they were both able to breathe easier, feeling like a cloud had passed over them and was finally gone.

“You’re no Alice.”

“Huh?” Shiro raised an eyebrow.

The smaller figure -- female, from the voice -- put hands on her hips. “You’re gonna die if you wander around here like an idiot.”

Shiro gave a weak shrug. So he was cannon fodder. Great. “I’d love it if you could show me the way out. Or just tell me what the hell is going on.”

“No time.” The girl clutched at her right sleeve and looked calculatingly at the door. “The coast is clear; we need to take advantage of it.” She headed toward the door but Shiro moved faster, taking her by surprise and grabbing her shoulder.

One hand flew to her knife but she didn’t move to throw him off, instead glaring back over her shoulder.

“This is a dream, right?” It was the only logic his brain would accept. Even if it felt far too real to be anything other than reality.

“Just keep telling yourself that.”

“No, wait --”

She slipped out of his grasp and pulled the door open a couple of inches, then darted out into the hallway. Shiro took a deep breath; the air was still musty and cardboard-y, but it did feel lighter than before. Not quite as heavy in his lungs. Maybe whatever had passed had cleared the air.

The girl was waiting in the hallway when he finally ventured out with jerky steps. “Caution is great,” she said, not looking up from her wristwatch, “but you’ve got to learn to move fast when you’ve got the opportunity.”

He moved forward to join her in front of the elevator. At the far end of the hall, the door had swung shut again, blocking the unnatural yellow light and leaving the corridor illuminated only by the flickering fluorescents. Everything else seemed the same as before. Shiro didn’t know why he was expecting footprints in the dust or bloody handprints trailed down the walls; in a way that would have made this all... not more real, but more bearable. Certain kinds of fear he could deal with. Halloween? No problem. Scary movies? A fun past time. But this, the utter unknown that left nothing but a sick horror in his stomach? He stood closer to the girl than absolutely necessary.

“I know you don’t want to talk, but I’m really lost. I woke up here. I don’t even know where _here_ is. Please, please tell me something.”

Expression stern, the girl turned to face him. Even though she had to crane her neck back to look him in the eye, she held an aura of command. “You came here through a so-called game. The Elevator Game. You’ve heard of it, right?”

Shiro shook his head but she didn’t slow down to explain.

“It’s not a game at all. I need you to listen very carefully to me, and understand that your life is at stake here. I don’t know the consequences for messing stuff up and I sure don’t want to find out.” She reached behind her into a side pocket of her backpack and pulled out a black marker. “I’m going to show you the way out. No questions, you just follow what I say _to the letter_. Yes?”

“Okay,” Shiro said. If this was a prank, it was the most realistic, thoroughly-staged prank he’d ever seen, and he might as well play along. And if the girl was telling the truth, he really didn’t have any other choice.

“You’re going to get on the elevator and push a certain number of floors. I’ll write them down because believe me, stuff gets crazy and you’ll forget everything.” She rolled up her left sleeve, revealing a row of thick black numbers written down the length of her forearm. “Here.”

Hesitantly, Shiro rolled up his left sleeve. The scars weren’t as bad on that side, not as bad as his right arm that hung half-paralyzed and useless. Even if other people never reacted visibly to the signs of his accident, he didn’t want to show them off. Might as well protect whatever pride he had left.

The girl held the pen cap between her teeth as she touched the marker to skin.

_1, 4, 2, 6, 2, 10, 5, 10x, 7, 1_

Shiro looked at his arm and raised an eyebrow. Before he could ask, the girl tapped the first number on his wrist.

“You start on the ground floor. Then push all these buttons, waiting for the doors to open and close again before you go on to the next step. When you press ten,” she pointed to the 10x on his arm, “hit seven _before_ you reach the top floor. Wait for the doors, all that, then go to one and leave.”

“Why does my arm say seven? Yours says ‘any’.”

“Good eye.” She tucked away the marker and pulled her sleeve back down. “Technically you can push any floor for that step, but seven is the safest. I’ve done this a lot and that’s the only floor where more crap doesn’t start happening. Usually.”

Shiro swallowed. “Anything else I need to know?”

“You’ll hear voices. You might see people, especially a woman. Heck, you might even think she’s me. Ignore everything she does and don’t say a word. Don’t look at anything, don’t speak, and you should make it out. When you get to the ground floor, leave the building and wait for me outside, okay?”

“You’re not coming with me?” That shouldn’t have sent a chill down his spine but it did, sudden and violent. He didn’t want to be in a box, trapped, no way out --

“It has to be done alone. I’ll be right behind you, don’t worry.”

Nodding, Shiro stepped forward, his newly inked arm reaching for the elevator button. The girl stopped him with a quiet sound and nodded her head off toward the metal door at the end of the hall.

“We should take the stairs. Start fresh at the ground floor.”

“No.” There was no rational reason for it, but that door and whatever lay beyond, he didn’t want to go there. He felt like a child, scared of the monsters under his bed.

The girl started off down the corridor, away from him. “It’s the only way. Plus, everything’s passed for now.”

With feet heavy as lead, Shiro followed her. The door receded the closer they got, until he was sure they’d walked hundreds of feet instead of maybe twenty. The elevator was still right behind him, the scuffed metal doors reflecting little light.

“My name’s Pidge, by the way.” She put her shoulder against the metal door and heaved. It came open with a groan, and Shiro raised a hand to shield his eyes from the light, but outside was only the dusty ash color of twilight in a smoggy city.

“Shiro,” he answered. It felt strange giving away his nickname, but everything here was strange. He needed that extra little bit of familiarity.

Outside was a small concrete landing with a rusted metal rail, and flights of hairpin stairs crawling down the side of the building. Shiro wanted to keep his eyes just on his feet -- something in Pidge’s warning to ignore his surroundings had unsettled him -- but he couldn’t help glancing up. The skyline was the same as he was used to; the towers of the university off in the middle distance, the skyscrapers of downtown even farther off. Nearby were the flat gray roofs of cheap housing, and litter-filled streets, and the occasional tree starving to death in its asphalt prison.

It was quiet. So, so deathly quiet.

The alley below them was empty, not that strange for whatever o’clock on a weekend. But back toward the campus there was a main highway and there was always traffic of some sort, students or lost tourists or the local bus routes.

Nothing.

Not even birds, not even cicadas hidden in the meager trees.

It felt like he was looking at a still photograph, the dull sepia tint of the sky rendering it a picture of a time long past. Lifeless and dusty, and not a hint of movement.

Pidge tapped on his hand. Shiro glanced down at where she’d paused halfway down the first flight of stairs and was relieved that at least she wasn’t monochrome too -- her shirt was autumn colors, muted green and orange that held just enough life to make her stand out from the landscape. Her eyes were deep honey and sharp as a fox’s, watching his face like she was... apprehensive of him? That was a possibility; not that he could blame her for being wary, in this world where nothing was as it seemed.

“I’ll follow you,” he said, nodding at the stairs. “Don’t worry abou--”

Her fingers had become an iron grip around his right wrist, tight enough to make his bones ache along old fracture lines. Air hissed between her teeth, louder than an exhale but not by much.

Mutely, Shiro nodded. The landscape might look dead, but anything could be watching. Listening.

Pidge glanced out at the deserted city but it was more of a warning than a lookout. They started down the stairs, much slower than Shiro would have liked, now that the silence of the place was thundering in his ears. Every scuff of boots, every loose bit of dislodged dirt, every brush of his fingertips along the rail was too loud. All it would take was one wrong noise and the stalking stillness would be broken. The last thing Shiro wanted was to be noticed.

They reached the foot of the stairs after what seemed a lifetime. Pidge, even with her backpack, was looking as sharp and poised as she had earlier, but Shiro was breathing hard. Everything ached. Sure, he wasn’t in the best of shape, but the drag of the stairs felt magnetic, trying to pull his feet around to wander his way back up to the top. Each step had been harder than the last until the ground came into view, the cracked edges of the parking lot, and it was like a chain being released.

Pidge pulled open a side door and peered into the corridor beyond, then motioned him through. Inside, the building looked just like the top floor -- same ratty carpeting, same flickering lights, same rows of closed doors and cinderblock walls and the menacing gleam of an elevator midway down the hall. Holding her shoulder to the door, Pidge retreated slowly, letting it swing closed until it settled against the frame and the lock engaged with a snap.

“Much better,” she said at a normal volume. “It’s always safer to be inside. Well, not always, but... whatever.”

“I have to ask,” Shiro said, stopping just inside the door. “Why do we have to take the elevator at all? Can’t we just leave through the lobby and go home?”

“I wish it was that simple,” Pidge replied. “You’re not in the real world anymore. The exit to this building isn’t the way out of here -- unless you really want to wander the empty streets. In order to get back to what you’re used to, you have to use the elevator. Trust me.”

“So taking the elevator and _then_ leaving through the lobby will work?”

“Yep.”

Shiro nodded, the lingering confusion and fear making him compliant. Pidge had an aura of confidence around her and he was willing to play along for now. He’d do pretty much anything, as a matter of fact, if it could make the creeping chill down his neck go away. There was also the growing, sinking feeling that this was no dream, but it couldn’t be real either. Could it?

“Push the button.” Pidge led the way down the hall. If not for her presence, Shiro would have never gone near the elevator. It looked ugly and smug, its doors just convex enough to warp their reflections like a funhouse mirror. Pidge looked short and fat, her glasses the size of saucers. Shiro’s reflection was right over the seam between the doors, cut in half with both sides staring back at him. Quickly he pushed the button and stepped aside.

“So I have to push all these buttons in the right order. Then what?” He itched to roll down his sleeve but the sight of the numbers was comforting in a way.

“Then you leave and never, ever play in elevators again. Although if you don’t mind staying outside the building until I come out, I’d like to talk with you more.”

“You’ll explain stuff?”

“As much as I’m able.” A chime sounded and there was the sound of the elevator car coming to a stop. “Need me to go over the instructions again?”

“I think I’m good.”

Pidge nodded. “No matter what happens, don’t leave the elevator till the end. Don’t look at anything and don’t say a word.”

The doors opened.

Heart in his throat, Shiro stepped on, immediately turning to look back at Pidge.

She gestured sideways with her thumb. “Face the corner. And don’t speak!”

Then the doors slid shut, Shiro’s own wide-eyed reflection replacing Pidge’s face. He looked down to his arm for direction. 4. Pushing the corresponding button, he turned his back and buried his face in the corner by the button panel. There was just enough room for him to cradle his arms around his chest and let his eyes graze over the bold numbers. They were proof that he wasn’t alone here.

The elevator chimed and opened on the fourth floor. Shiro shut his eyes, shoulders shivering with tension as he listened for the sound of someone getting on. But there seemed to be nothing and at last the doors closed again. He swallowed and let his right hand trace over the buttons; he could feel the Braille numbers, but couldn’t read any of them. The car stayed motionless.

What if someone had gotten on? What if they were holding their breath too, just waiting for Shiro to open his eyes and see them?

His lungs were going to burst. Finally he let out a shaky exhale and opened his eyes a slit. There was enough ambient light for him to see the unlit buttons and, after a quick glance at his arm, he pushed the next number and slammed his eyes closed again. If there was only one way out of here, damned if he wasn’t going to do it right.

The same torturous process repeated for the next floor, and the next, and the next.

He started getting cocky as he pushed the fifth floor button. Nothing had happened, not like Pidge had made him fear. No Lovecraftian eldritch horrors shambled aboard the elevator with him. The numbers didn’t jump around. He didn’t suddenly forget his own name. Two more floors and he would be able to forget this ever happened.

Even before the doors opened for the fifth floor, he knew he’d relaxed too soon.

There were _noises._

A clamor of indistinct voices rose from beyond the elevator doors. He wanted so badly to mash the ‘door closed’ button and not face whatever was waiting, but the unspoken danger in Pidge’s instructions was somehow more terrifying than the increasing cacophony. The numbers stood out black on bold on his arm, a key that would keep him safe until the end of this nightmare.

But whatever protection it offered felt flimsier and flimsier as the voices kept rising in volume and the doors slid open. Outside, in the brief glimpse in his peripheral vision before he slapped a hand over his face, the hallway was completely empty.

That didn’t mean that the noises abated one bit.

Keeping his right eye, the one nearest the opening, shielded with his hand, Shiro glanced at his forearm. 10x. That meant he’d have to push the button, wait for the elevator to start moving, then stop it before it reached the top floor. His pulse pounded.

The voices kept screeching and murmuring gibberish, rising and falling like a large crowd was gathered right outside. From the sound of it, the hallway ought to be packed full of people but there wasn’t a breath of movement. The elevator stayed placidly at a full stop; the floor didn’t move, indicating that no one -- presumably -- got on. The fact that Shiro had to even consider that someone could have gotten on without him feeling it... was terrifying.

He pushed the top button carefully, then a little harder when it failed to light up. No no no. No way he was getting stuck here in limbo.

Abruptly the voices stopped and the sudden hush was just as bad as the disorienting noise. In the distance, there was the whir of machinery, but it wasn’t nearly enough to drown out the tapping of light footsteps entering the elevator. They took three dainty steps and stopped in the opposite corner by the door.

It felt like an eternity later when the doors started to close and the tenth-floor button finally lit up. Shiro still had his hand pressed tight to the side of his face and his jaw was clenched against any involuntary noises being startled out of him. Pidge’s instructions seemed stupid but this wasn’t his building, he would never again have to see any of these people (if there actually was someone on the elevator with him), and he could live with a reputation of weirdness if it got him back to his apartment in one piece.

“Are you okay?” a woman’s voice asked, soft and gentle. She sounded young. Harmless. Concerned about him.

Shiro swallowed and closed his eyes as an added precaution. When would the elevator start moving; he needed it to move before he could press the next button. Except now that his eyes were closed, he didn’t want to open them again. The woman was still in her corner -- he could hear her breaths -- but what if he happened to see something when he glanced down at his arm? Was peripheral vision against the rules? What about accidents?

Blindly he reached out and rested his fingers on the smooth plastic of the button panel. The elevator’s gears started up and he lurched at the acceleration. Slitting his left eye open, he could just barely make out the number 7, and pushed it hard enough to leave an imprint of the engraved number on his thumb.

“You didn’t come here intentionally. I understand that you’re afraid.”

Biting back a terrified whine, Shiro closed his eyes again and wished he knew some prayers. Or karate. Or that he could pinch himself hard enough to wake up.

“It was because of the lions, wasn’t it? How many has the witch managed to gather?” the woman continued. She seemed not to care that she was being shunned. Or maybe she knew that no matter how tightly Shiro squeezed his eyes shut and ground his teeth together, he couldn’t block out the sound of her voice that whispered around and around his head.

_Go away go away._

The elevator jolted and shuddered to a stop. The doors opened at floor 7 and Shiro had to look at his arm for the next step. Heart in his throat, he glanced down at the thick line of the 1 written on his arm. He was almost done. He’d made it.

Until the silent woman moved toward him. He flinched back, sensing her presence coming closer, and punched the first-floor button hard enough to crack it. A hand touched his right arm and every muscle in his body seized up. It felt like he wasn’t even there any more, watching from some other area of his brain as the tendons in his neck moved and he made eye contact with the woman.

Shocking white hair framed a dark, pretty face. Her eyes were soft, a multifaceted hue that reflected the light in cascading sparkles. Magic, if he’d ever seen it. Utterly dangerous.

He couldn’t stifle a whimper as his eyes were allowed to fall shut and he staggered forward, hitting the control panel and slamming his fists into it. He’d messed up. One rule and he’d messed up _badly_.

“I apologize,” the woman said. It was hard to hear her voice over the adrenaline pounding through Shiro’s skull, but he certainly felt it when her hand left his skin. His whole arm, shoulder to fingertips, tingled like it had fallen asleep, like he’d pinched a nerve. Only there weren’t nerves there to _be_ pinched; it was one of the many things the doctors hadn’t been able to mend. It felt wrong in a way that made his very bones ache, and he clenched his hand into a fist. His nails bit into his palm but he couldn’t feel it.

“The Emperor is coming. You need to know that. I’m not your enemy in this world.”

Shiro pressed his head harder into the wall, hoping for some other stimulus to drive her voice away. At last the woman fell silent, a dangerous presence that tingled at the back of his neck. The elevator stopped at the first floor and Shiro blindly shoved his way forward, forcing his way through the half-open doors and into the hallway beyond. He couldn’t get his feet under himself fast enough, stumbling into the wall before righting himself, opening his eyes in his panic, and racing for the glass double doors that marked the lobby.

He thought the woman stayed in the elevator but he couldn’t be sure. Just because there weren’t heeled footsteps trailing after him, or warm fingers ghosting his arm, didn’t mean anything.

He burst through the doors and stopped on the sidewalk at the edge of the front parking lot. Noise surrounded him -- birds, an airplane, cars passing. People talking as they went about their business. It was an ordinary weekend scene in this area.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Shiro looked around to get his bearings. Oak Street was several blocks from where he lived, but not an inconceivable distance for him to have sleepwalked. Although he had to admit, if his sleepwalking was taking an adventurous turn, it was time to start tying himself to the bedframe at night. No way he was having a repeat performance of this morning.

But he hesitated now that he was standing safely outside the rundown apartment building. In the late morning sunlight, with people going about their own business on the sidewalk, and the hum of cars along the road... everything was normal. His earlier paranoia seemed like just that, paranoia. This was all a crazy case of sleepwalking and not happening to see anyone around when he woke. Right?

Pidge was a conspiracy theorist or a nutcase or a kid looking for kicks from scaring random people. Occam’s razor -- things were no more complicated than a simple explanation. There was no Elevator Game, no lives in danger, no consequences for riding the elevator wrong. That was so stupid it was laughable.

But Shiro still lingered there. Maybe talking to Pidge would help him move on from this. If she was stark raving crazy in the light of day, then he would feel better about brushing her off.

“Glad you stuck around.”

He turned to see her coming up behind him, stopping a few feet away with her arms crossed.

“Glad you could follow directions, too,” she added.

Narrowing his eyes, he glanced at the door behind her and then back at Pidge herself. “That was an awfully fast elevator ride, considering how many floors --”

“I have other ways of traveling. Part of being an Alice.” She waved him off. “Right now, I just want to give you a basic safety lesson if you’re going to make a habit of messing with the Otherworld.”

“You’re using an awful lot of proper nouns that I don’t understand.”

Pidge rolled her eyes. “There’s a lot of stuff that you really don’t want to know, if you want to get any sleep at night.” She paused and glared at him. “What are you smiling about?”

“Bad dreams are kind of the norm for me now. But go on.”

Pidge opened her mouth to reply but paused, eyes widening in surprise. Shiro glanced down, following her line of sight, and noticed that the lion pendant had gotten flipped to the outside of his shirt, in plain sight.

Selfconsciously, he reached up and dropped it back inside his collar. Pidge’s expression wasn’t exactly judgmental, but he didn’t want just anyone looking at the charm. Something about it felt too personal to be gawked at.

“I wouldn’t normally comment, but --” Pidge started, then shut her mouth and stepped closer. Pulling up her right sleeve a bit, she held out her arm. On her wrist was a delicately inked tattoo of a lion, done in jade green, no more than an inch long.

It was the perfect match to Shiro’s pendant.

He looked at the tattoo for longer than strictly necessary; it gave him an anchor while the rest of the world spun out from beneath him. The first thought that popped into his head was that the pendant belonged to Pidge and she would want it back. He clenched his teeth at that thought. No way he was giving it up, it was his, and it felt _right_ , warm and smooth against his chest.

“How would you feel about coming to meet my boss?” Pidge was saying. She’d pulled her sleeve back down but her fingers were playing with the hem, twisting it tighter and tighter against her arm. “I think you might already be deeper in the Otherworld than you know.”

Shiro felt like laughing because the craziness was resurfacing and he was going right along with it, the same way he’d unquestionably followed her instructions when riding the elevator. “Will it make the nightmares go away?”

She glared at him, sensing that he was less than serious, but gave a considering nod anyway. “There’s a chance. Anything’s possible, really. If you want to give it a try.”

Shrugging, Shiro glanced at his wrist where his watch should have been if he hadn’t pawned it off last week in exchange for dinner. “I’m not busy this afternoon.”

“Good.” Pidge took out a notebook from her endless backpack, tore a page, and scribbled an address. “Be here by five tonight. We’ll supply food.”

Shiro could feel his eyes light up at that. “See you then.”

“Yeah.”

\----

The address turned out to belong to an old two-story house not far from Shiro’s own apartment building. Most of the neighborhood around campus had been claimed by students, renting out to five or six people depending on the house’s size. Shiro had spent a couple of semesters living in the basement of one; small and cramped and always with noise filtering down from the rest of the house.

But judging by the single car parked in the leafblown driveway, someone had enough money to keep an entire house to themselves. Pidge had mentioned her boss, so it might make sense that someone in charge had enough money for that.

It was also one of the few houses on the block that still had its old trees in the front yard, instead of burned-out stumps or sloppily landscaped flowerbeds. A pair of huge oaks, each at least three feet in diameter, dominated the yard and cast spreading pools of shadow over the sidewalk and porch.

Shiro’s stomach rumbled to itself and he cut through the yard to get to the front door. Even if he decided to cut and run from this madness, at least he could get a solid meal out of it. With that thought in mind, he raised his left hand to the doorbell and rang.

There was the sound of footsteps inside, coming closer. Heels, from the neat tapping sound. Shiro put on his friendliest smile and hid his right hand in his pocket. It was always easier that way; precluded people from wanting to shake hands.

At that moment the door was pulled open, framing a young woman with a flowing dress and long white hair.

Mouth dry, Shiro’s first panicked thought was _don’t look!_ as he stumbled backward, his back slamming into the railing of the porch. His left hand fumbled along the wood, fingernails dragging against splinters as he tried to find something to stabilize himself.

“Sorry for startling you!” The woman looked just as shocked as him and took a step back, hands up placatingly. “You must be Shiro?”

He nodded, still with Pidge’s words _don’t talk don’t say a word_ ringing in his head.

“Pidge said you’d be coming.” She stepped aside, then hesitated as it became clear Shiro wasn’t peeling himself from the railing any time soon. “Are you okay?”

“About time you showed up,” Pidge’s voice came from inside the house. She appeared at the white-haired woman’s elbow, one hand supporting a laptop, with headphones draped around her neck. “Hey there.”

For the first time, Shiro found his voice. “Hey.”

Pidge glanced between him and the woman. “Allura, I told you your hair makes you look like a ghost. Like, pin it up or something.”

“Sorry.” The woman nervously swept a hand across her forehead, pushing her bangs aside, and clasped her hands in front of her. “I’m really sorry. I’m Allura, by the way.”

 Shiro gave her a slight bow, glad that shaking hands had been averted. Now he just had to get his heart rate back down to a manageable range after his initial shock. Hadn’t Pidge said that the woman on the elevator might look like anyone, even Pidge herself? It was yet another bizarre coincidence in this whole day of coincidences.

The interior of the house was open and brightly lit -- no monsters in the shadows there. The wallpaper and furniture looked house original, slightly worn, very ornate, almost Victorian? Shiro didn’t know exactly what era it was from but it looked rich in the way that he associated with elderly aunts who never called and never visited, hidden away in their mansions, content to ignore the foreigner blood that had invaded their family tree. He didn’t like it.

“Have a seat.” Allura cleared off an astrological starmap and a few books from one of the deep red, velveteen couches. “Want anything to drink?”

“Not right now, thanks,” he said, looking around as he sat down. The walls were lined with bookcases crammed with books faded so badly the spines were unreadable. One shelf was stacked with maps and oversized paper; another had what appeared to be parchment scrolls neatly curled around wooden dowels. There were several oddities he couldn’t place, things that looked like archaic navigational equipment and little Grecian figurines. To top it off, on the wall next to the door was a woven dreamcatcher, complete with beads and feathers hanging down.

There was a picture window behind the couch and Shiro had to fight with all he had not to turn around and see if there was a ‘Madame Allura, Fortunetelling and Palm Reading’ sign in the front yard. It would have made this feel less off-center.

Allura took a seat in an armchair across from him, white hair silhouetting her against the dark furniture. “Pidge says you found your own way into the Otherworld. Can you tell me your side of the story?”

“There’s not much to tell.” He raised his left hand to touch the pendant through his shirt, but stopped and let his arm rest on his thigh. “I woke up there. I’ve had a lot of sleepwalking episodes ever since... for a while now. It’s not that strange for me to wake up in the lobby of my apartment building.”

“How far is your home from where we were this morning?” Pidge asked, still cradling her laptop like it was a child as she sat on the end of the couch next to him.

“About half a mile.”

“Ever sleepwalked that far before?”

“No.”

Allura crossed her legs, a bump in the silky sheen of her dress. “I can see that you’re getting impatient with us being the ones asking the questions. Go ahead and speak your mind.”

Easier said than done. What should he ask first? Alices? The Otherworld? The Elevator Game? Why Allura looked so much like the woman on the elevator? Why his pendant looked just like Pidge’s tattoo?

“I guess, everything?” He shrugged despite the way it pulled at his right shoulder uncomfortably. “What do you two do?”

Leaning forward, Allura plucked a teacup from the coffee table and took a sip. “Am I right to assume that you don’t have any knowledge of the supernatural? You’ve never encountered anything out of the ordinary before?”

Shiro made a noncommittal sound. “I don’t... _didn’t_ believe in ghosts. But I’m hardly an expert on anything like that.”

“Well then this is gonna knock your socks off,” Pidge said with a hint of a laugh. “The place where I met you this morning is called the Otherworld. Actually, we don’t know if that’s it’s real name, but we haven’t met anyone to tell us otherwise. It’s kind of a mirror to our world. A lot of things are similar, but the things that live there aren’t human.

“As far as I’ve seen in my scouting missions, the Otherworld is only inhabited by... I don’t know. Allura and I call them aberrations, but really that’s just our take. Demons, maybe. Spirits. Depends on your religion, I guess. But whatever you want to call them, it’s abundantly clear that they aren’t on humanity’s side.”

As Pidge finally stopped and took a breath, Allura picked up the thread of conversation.

“There are ways to cross over between these two worlds. One, the Elevator Game, you’ve already discovered. It’s a modern version of a very old ritual. There are other ways to summon things to our world, or vice versa: ouija boards, the child’s rhyme of Bloody Mary, even some of the Bermuda Triangle disappearances.

“But one thing is very important to note, and it’s very dangerous for you to accidentally cross over. While it’s relatively easy to get to the Otherworld if you know the means -- if you know the elevator numbers, for instance -- it’s very hard to get back out once you’re in. That’s the sole reason why this world isn’t flooded with aberrations and demons, because they _can’t_ get out of their world unless specifically summoned.”

Shiro raised his hand, feeling like he was in school again. “So how was Pidge able to get us out so easily? Couldn’t any elevator be used to cross over?”

“Actually, no,” Pidge cut in before Allura could. “There are only a few rifts around town. We got lucky and that building had one. If it hadn’t, we could have been searching a long time before we found somewhere else for you to get out.”

“Hm.” Shiro chewed his bottom lip. This was a huge amount of information to process, but it seemed to make sense in its own weird way. At least there was a pattern to the madness, he thought briefly. His headache was lingering, threatening to make a comeback, but he pushed it aside.

“Pidge, can I ask... why do you cross over, if it’s so dangerous? Why would _anyone_ want to go to an alternate-reality demon world?”

“The same reason humans have gone to the moon and the ocean floor,” Pidge commented. “Because we can. And because it’s my job. Better me crossing over than you; at least I know how to get out.”

“Alice is the name given to people who make it a regular habit to cross over and explore the Otherworld,” Allura continued. “Pidge is an Alice who makes sure that the mirror version of this city is relatively free from aberrations who might try to cross over.”

“Like a supernatural early warning system?”

Pidge grinned smugly. “It’s a cooler job than most people’s, right?”

“So about these demons, aberrations, whatever,” Shiro mused, starting to fit together some pieces. “The woman I saw in the elevator, was she one?”

“What?” Allura’s eyes were sharp on him. “Pidge, didn’t you warn him not to --”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Pidge bit back, glaring at Shiro like a venomous snake. “After everything I said, you _looked_?”

A weight like a rock settled deeper in his gut. One rule, one rule and he’d managed to break it. He licked his lips. “So, like, is my life forfeit now or something?”

“Or something,” Allura echoed, frowning. “By interacting with the Otherworld, it’s now linked to you to some extent and there’s no telling... Pidge, do you think you could teach him how to survive as an Alice?”

Both Pidge and Shiro jerked upright. “Don’t you think that’s a little too far?” Shiro asked. “I mean, she may not have noticed that I looked at her.”

Pidge slowly closed her laptop and propped her chin on her hands. The lamplight was reflected off her glasses, turning them into shining discs with no sight of her eyes behind them. “Hm. It might be good for you. Especially if you sleepwalk a lot; some people say that’s one way to accidentally fall into the Otherworld.”

Oh great. What would be the next reveal, that his landlord was a demon and he’d unknowingly bartered away his soul with last month’s rent?

“So what’s involved in being an Alice?”

\----

Shiro wondered if it was a good thing he was unemployed, because it gave him plenty of free time to indulge in all this Otherworld lore; or if none of this would have happened to him if he’d had a job and kept himself busy elsewhere.

According to Pidge, there wasn’t much to being an Alice other than going to the Otherworld and coming back in one piece, preferably with some sort of intel on what was going on over there. Shiro had asked, more than half serious, if he could do all the work on _this_ side of the demon world and leave all the exploring to Pidge -- it sat badly with him to let her go into danger, but she seemed more competent at all this anyway.

That conversation had ended with the offer to go the next day and meet two other members of Allura’s network, who specialized in containing the nightmares when they reached the real world. Shiro was expecting some sort of... he wasn’t sure. Maybe a wealthy businessman with a basement full of silver bullets. Maybe an eccentric old woman in a black dress and pointy hat. He had no idea what sort of people would be willingly working for Allura’s particular brand of crazy.

But when Pidge led the way, just a few streets over, to a single-wide trailer parked in the middle of a construction zone for the new campus parking garage, Shiro could feel his eyebrows drawing down in confusion. The trailer was nice enough to be a mobile headquarters and there were a couple of workers in neon green vests taking a break in its shadow.

“Morning, guys,” Pidge said, giving them a nod. “Is Hunk in?”

“He went on a pizza run,” one of them replied. “Back in a few. Lance is in there if you need something.”

“Thanks.” She knocked once on the door and then pushed it open. “Hey, slacker. What’s up?”

“Pidge! You dragged yourself all the way out here to see me?”

“Actually I came to talk to Hunk. But I guess you’ll have to do.”

Shiro followed the sound of Pidge’s voice inside and let the door swing closed behind him. Inside, the trailer was open and airy, one large room that was well-lit and covered in evidence of a big project in full swing. A set of construction blueprints was pinned to the wall. There was a portable air conditioner wedged in the window, buzzing away like its motor was about to fall out. A messy desk littered with progress reports and colored highlighters.

“Shiro, meet Lance. He’s Hunk’s moral support when projects get too overwhelming.”

Shiro’s attention was directed to a spindly teenager sitting perched on the edge of the desk. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, looking just like any other college student Shiro had ever met. Except his eyes were pale, a white film of cataracts over blue.

“Hello, nice to meet ya.” Lance smiled and held out a hand.

Shiro edged forward, managing to force his right arm up to shake hands, but there was no strength in his fingers. Lance cocked his head, milky eyes narrowing slightly.

“You, too,” Shiro said.

Lance relaxed back against the desk and gave him a friendly grin. “See, Pidge, I knew you’d find friends eventually.”

“Yeah, yeah, so you can see the future now too?” Pidge scoffed and settled herself in the overstuffed desk chair, finding a box of doughnuts hidden amid the paperwork. “What else do your Elf eyes see?”

Lance smirked. “They see that Hunk’s going to be mourning an apple fritter.”

“It’s chocolate.”

“Close enough.” He turned, pulling one knee up onto the desk as he faced Shiro more directly. “I’m guessing you’re here because...?”

“Apparently I’m an Alice now. And what’s an Elf?” As far as Shiro could tell, it was just another code name. Unless the fae were living alongside humanity, which... actually wouldn’t be all that hard to believe after hearing about demons and mirror worlds.

“It just means that I can see ley lines. They’re areas where rifts are likely to open between here and the Otherworld. I’m kinda like a bloodhound for trouble.” Lance chuckled.

“So you work for Allura too?”

Pidge mumbled something around a mouthful of pastry, then swallowed and explained, “Everyone around here with any kind of abilities works for Allura. She’s responsible for organizing everything. Off the books, of course.”

There was the sound of footsteps outside and the doorknob rattled. Pidge ate the rest of the doughnut in one bite, wiped her mouth, and sat up straighter, innocent. The door was shoved open and Shiro took a step back as a large man came in bearing pizza boxes and a dour expression.

“I smell lunch.” Lance perked up noticeably.

“Hey, Hunk,” Pidge greeted. “What’s up?”

“A new job for you, probably.” Balancing the boxes in one hand, he reached to the top of the stack and tossed her a newspaper. “I, ah...” His eyes rested uneasily on Shiro before going back to Pidge. “It’s your kind of stuff.”

“Otherworld stuff, you mean,” she commented, already thumbing through the paper.

Hunk looked troubled at discussing it in front of Shiro, but Lance piped up, “It’s cool. Shiro’s one of us now.” He stood up and skimmed fingertips along the wall until he found a folding chair and sat down. “Pidge is babysitting him.”

“Oh. Nice to meet you.” Hunk held out a hand -- it happened to be his left, and Shiro took it gratefully. “I’m the construction manager of this site.”

“Are you an Alice?”

Hunk laughed. “No way. I prefer keeping both feet in the real world. It’s Lance’s job to spot the rifts and my job to seal them.”

Shiro cocked an eyebrow. “Pave over the rifts?”

“Not quite,” Lance cut in. “There are special materials and patterns that you can work into the architecture to make it seal. Different locations use different stuff though, so that’s why I’m along to see what’s needed.”

“Hm.” So the blind person was the only one who could see. No less strange than anything else around here.

Pidge frowned at the newspaper she was skimming, and made an unhappy noise. “You’re definitely right about weird stuff happening. The Otherworld has got to be involved in some way.”

“What’s going on?” Shiro asked. Hunk leaned against the edge of the desk and set out the pizza boxes, with a wave of his hand to help themselves. They all settled around as Pidge turned the newspaper around to show the headline.

_Strange New Illness Causes 4 Deaths at Local Hospital_

“It’s always something,” she muttered. “Just another case for us to look into. Apparently healthy people go into the clinic for minor injuries, and they end up dying. Of course the doctors are blaming it on stuff they can understand, but it’s probably not.”

“Yeah, it didn’t sound like a real disease to me.” Hunk shrugged. “I mean, I’m not a doctor, but it is a little fishy. Think it’s worth checking out?”

Lance reached for a piece of pizza and expertly flicked the trailing cheese up onto the slice. “Just ‘cause it’s death doesn’t mean it’s necessarily Otherworld stuff. We’ve gotta prove to Shiro that our job isn’t all doom and gloom.”

“Yeah, sometimes it’s demons, too.”

“Pidge. Not what I meant.”

Shiro shrugged and laughed it off. “I’ve already caught a glimpse of the Otherworld once today. How much worse could it possibly get?”

“You’ve seen more than a glimpse,” Lance joked back around a mouthful. “I mean, you’re glowing all over with leys. Your whole body is lit up like a Christmas tree!”

The sudden hush in the room was tangible as everyone but Lance took in Shiro’s downturned expression. And even Lance, picking up quickly on the lack of laughter, slumped in on himself.

“Sorry,” he murmured, creasing his eyebrows and looking down. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Shiro made a generic noise of acceptance, but didn’t have anything to add. Lance’s words had struck a little too close and even if the others didn’t have magic eyes that could see everything, he still felt like a bug on a pin.

“Shiro has a lion charm shaped just like my tattoo,” Pidge spoke up, voice too loud. “And we know I’m pretty much a walking rift myself now.”

“So I’m a demon magnet because of my pendant?”

Pidge twitched her shoulders up. “Who knows. Although I am curious where you got it.”

“I wish I knew. It’s... it was under weird circumstances.”

Hunk reached out and rested a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t wanna. These guys are nosy little imps.”

“Nah, it’s fine. Now I’m just wondering how much of my life has been influenced by this Otherworld stuff and I’ve never known. Like are nightmares just nightmares, or...?”

“It’s pretty hard to tell most of the time. Especially with rifts everywhere nowadays,” Lance said. “Although with you?” he glanced over, blind eyes sweeping over Shiro with intensity. “I’d guess you’re deeper into the Otherworld than most people.”

As if that wasn’t completely unsettling.

Pidge wiped her mouth on a napkin and bounced to her feet. “The main reason I was bringing Shiro out here was to see if he had anything special about him. Lance, could you show him around the construction site, see if he can detect any ley lines? It’d be handy to have another Elf around.”

“Sure.” Lance picked up a long white cane and headed for the door. “The rift here is mostly sealed but there should be enough left for you to see some of it... if your eyes are so inclined.”

Shiro followed him out of the trailer, hands ready to steady Lance in case he stumbled, but the Elf seemed to know his way around expertly. Once on solid ground, Lance headed off toward the middle of the construction site, mostly deserted since the workers were still on break. He slowed his strides, cocking his head to catch the sound of Shiro’s footsteps, then picked up the pace as they fell into step together.

“I’m sorry for what I said back there. I have no filter. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“It’s okay,” Shiro said quickly. “I didn’t mean to sound so offended.”

“I have a tendency to read situations wrong, you know? I heard people laughing and thought to make a joke. One of the downsides to being blind; I can’t always figure out social interactions well.”

“You seem like a perfectly nice guy,” Shiro said, trying to put his earnestness into words. “It’s not your fault. I mean, I was joking at first too, so it’s understandable.”

“Well I’m glad that’s cleared up.” Lance returned to his smiling self. “If I start doing something stupid again, just yell at me or whatever. I’ll figure it out eventually.”

The conversation died down into friendly silence and Lance stopped walking after a few more steps, cane hovering over the smooth-packed dirt. He turned in a slow circle and seemed to be surveying the area, although Shiro could only see piled construction materials and a group of workers having lunch in the shade of a bulldozer.

“See anything interesting around here?” Lance gestured outward with a wide sweep. “Tell me what you see.”

“Looks like a pretty ordinary construction site to me.” Shiro looked closer, trying to spot any important details that he might be missing. “There are some crows on the ground back near the trailer... there are tread tracks all over the place... some little pink flags marking where the corners of the building will be.”

“No glowing white lines that kind of sear into your eyes and make you dizzy if you stare too long?”

“Um. No.” Shiro shot a sideways glance at his companion, but Lance seemed perfectly content, smiling slightly at the red clay landscape. “Is that what you see?”

“Pretty much. They’re kind of dimmed now that Hunk’s almost done with the seal, but there’s still enough showing through that you ought to see something if you were an Elf.”

“The seal? But there’s nothing here.”

“Look down.”

Shiro was about to say that there was nothing on the ground but the prints of heavy boots and tire marks, but now that he was looking closer, he could see regularly-spaced dark stripes of dirt. The pattern radiated out like wheel spokes from the center of the site; at the end of every dark spoke was a perfectly square block of white marble, clearly set apart from the rest of the building materials.

“That’s... definitely something.”

“Seals come in all shapes and sizes, linked to the features of the rift you’re sealing. This one is more like a medicine wheel but really, the names don’t matter. It’s a way to seal up any rifts between here and the Otherworld. It’s my job to spot the rifts and recognize what kind of stuff is needed to seal it. In this case, it’s a bunch of pure marble. Other times it’s trees planted in specific patterns, or an undercoat of silver paint, or little cord-and-feather dreamcatchers. Pretty much anything is possible, but it takes an Elf to see exactly what’s needed.”

Now that he knew what to look for, Shiro could tell that the blocks were arranged very carefully, eight of them equally spaced around the perimeter and one larger one in the center. They all looked to be polished off, with no sign of dirt anywhere on them.

“Seems like a pretty good deal for Hunk,” Shiro said as they started back toward the trailer. “He gets the building contract and seals rifts at the same time.”

“It would be better if Allura was paying us, but yeah. Protecting people from aberrations is a nice side job.” Lance sounded downcast for the first time. “Hunk wants to break off from her, though. The thought of the Otherworld scares him and he wants to go back to ordinary work contracts that don’t deal with rifts and seals.”

“That’s understandable,” Shiro said. He didn’t know how to be comforting, but he could certainly sympathize with Hunk’s fear. “I mean, all this talk of the Otherworld is out of my league, and I’ve only been there once. I’m not sure myself that I want to go through with this Alice business.”

“Man, I totally understand. Everything in this line of work is freaky.”

One of the scars on Shiro’s right arm tingled, pulling tight and itching even though the nerve there was long dead. He tried to rub at it through his sleeve but that didn’t help; the skin couldn’t register the sensation, and the discomfort settled into his bones. Nothing to do but wait for it to wear off.

“Did you always know that you were an Elf?” Shiro asked. He was almost certain, from the way that Lance was carrying his head, that he was listening to the futile sounds of fingernails on cloth, and it was oddly embarrassing. Shiro was used to being stared at; being listened to was new and uncomfortable.

“Nope. At first I had no idea that not everyone saw the leys. I only realized I had something special...” he paused and swallowed, finishing the sentence in little more than a whisper, “once it was too late.”

“Oh.” Shiro wasn’t sure if an apology was in order -- he seemed to have unwittingly brought up a sore subject -- but before he could think of anything better than _I’m sorry_ , they were in front of the trailer again. Lance tucked his cane under his arm, out of the way, and reached for the doorknob; Shiro was a step behind him, still with an uneasy expression.

A black flash flew past Shiro’s head, causing him to jerk back and cry out in shock. There was a crash just in front of him, a shrill cry and the sound of crunching glass. Lance stumbled backward, arms up to shield his face, and Shiro tried to catch him but only ended up taking them both to the ground.

There was a scatter of black feathers on the ground by the door, surrounding the body of a large crow. It was clearly dead, neck snapped sideways at a right angle, dead eyes shiny and pupil-less.

“What was that?” Lance asked in a breathy voice. Scrambling to his feet, he started to feel around with his cane but Shiro grabbed his arm and stopped him.

“The hell?” Hunk appeared in the doorway, looking just as shaken as the two outside. “That’s a first.”

Shiro waited until Lance was steady on his feet before letting go of his arm. “It’s just a crow that flew into the door. Must not have seen that it was shut.”

“It’s dead?”

“Yeah.”

Lance looked up at the sound of Hunk’s footsteps in the doorway, and reached for Hunk’s hand. The bigger man guided him easily around the mess and helped Lance up into the trailer. “I’ll get someone to clean it up. Come on back inside.”

Shiro did so, careful to not disturb the feathers. A bit of blood trickled sluggishly from the open beak. The wings were still outstretched, spanning nearly two feet, a pool of darkness and sharp angles.

Rather than step over it, Shiro gave the bird a large berth, inching his way in the door and shutting it behind him. One of the glass panels was cracked and bloodied but he turned his back on it resolutely.

Freak happening, nothing more.

He tried to ignore how those situations were coming up more and more frequently in his life lately.

 


	2. Black Bird, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check out the art for this chapter [here](http://ylakerrananimehomo.tumblr.com/post/171356832096/second-piece-of-art-for-the-vldhorrorbang-of-the)!!

Shiro felt blessed when nothing more untoward happened over the next couple of days. He didn’t have the opportunity to see much more of Lance and Hunk, but he stopped over at Allura’s house once to see her and Pidge. It was hard getting their schedules to match up; Shiro was currently busing tables at a day-job that left him exhausted by the end of each shift.

Money was no longer such a pressing issue -- at least as long as he was scheduled for enough hours -- but spare energy was hard to come by. More than once, Shiro thought about asking Hunk if he was looking to hire, but pride got in his way. He didn’t want to have to explain to someone he barely knew that his arms ached after only a few hours of work and he had to have “easy” jobs that didn’t make his body flare into unbearable pain.

Shiro wasn’t feeling quite that desperate yet.

The one time he got off work and visited the house, in the hopes of talking to Pidge about what _exactly_ were the duties of an Alice, only Allura had been home. She’d been very nice, even going so far as to offer dinner, but Shiro had declined. Being alone in her presence was unnerving. It was too close to the feeling he’d had on the elevator, a sense of being trapped with the unknown. No way out.

So he stayed as long as he felt polite and made small talk. He found out that Pidge was orphaned, ostensibly, and staying with Allura until she was old enough to make it on her own.

Ostensibly.

That had a story behind it, certainly, and he almost asked. Except it was none of his business, and he’d rather ask Pidge herself, and _Allura_. She was wearing a blouse with a high neck and ruffled sleeves, looking just like a Victorian cameo. Her dark velvet skirt swished around her ankles, giving her the illusion of gliding seamlessly over the floor when she went to get him a drink. Right at home in this house, right at home in the strange decorations and occult symbols etched along the edges of the decorative mirrors, but...

Wrong.

Shiro went home that night and checked inside his shower and under his bed, checking every possible hiding place in his tiny one-room apartment, before he relaxed enough to think of food. It wasn’t like him to be this paranoid, and he knew he was acting irrationally, but given the circumstances he felt there was no choice.

It was as if the Otherworld could rub off on him from Allura, and he didn’t want to risk bringing that into his safe space.

Just the half hour of visiting at her house had brought back his fear of the unknown, the trapped suffocating feeling he’d almost forgotten after escaping that elevator. But Allura’s stark white hair and glittering eyes felt just alien enough that anything could be real now. Demons, ghosts, magic arrays of stones that could seal rifts. Sure, why not.

Shiro finished his dinner and dumped the plate in the sink before heading to take a shower. Tomorrow was the weekend and although he really should see if any of the diners around campus needed a dish-washer, he just wanted a day off to relax.

The hot water felt good on the strained muscles of his back and for a while he could close his eyes and feel normal again. As long as he didn’t let the past interfere with the present, he’d be okay.

That sense of almost-peace lasted until he got out of the shower, hair dripping in wet trails across his face, and reached for his clean clothes. His shirt and sweatpants were there but the lion pendant that he’d carefully set on top was missing. It should have been right there; it was always the last thing he took off and the first thing he put on.

At first he glanced at the floor, thinking he’d knocked it off without noticing. Nothing there. With growing agitation, he pulled on his clothes and headed back to the main room of the studio apartment.

He was almost certain that he remembered taking it off but... his tired mind must have been playing tricks.

The little jade pendant was standing up on the edge of the counter, one paw raised toward him, looking like a cat wanting attention. Shiro blinked at it for a moment, then glanced around the rest of the apartment. But if he was expecting a masked intruder to be standing there, or a faint ghostly shape, he was happily disappointed. Everything was as he’d left it -- or close enough that he couldn’t tell the difference.

Only the pendant had been moved.

“Haha,” he said in a tone that lacked all humor. “A prankster ghost. Just what I needed.”

The thought was unsettling, and he couldn’t decide which would be worse: a real ghost, or him simply slowly losing his mind.

Picking up the pendant, he smoothed his thumb over it quickly to check for any damage but all the edges were warm and rounded. Shiro slipped the cord over his neck and breathed a sigh of relief when it settled against his chest where it belonged.

Since nothing was obviously wrong, he disregarded the paranoia prickling at the back of his mind, and grabbed a soda from the fridge. He slumped down gratefully on the foot of his bed and flipped on the tv, intending to channel surf through mindless home improvement shows until his brain was as tired as his body and he could sleep.

Or at least, that was what he’d intended to do.

He flipped past a local news channel talking about another string of recent deaths at the nearby hospital, and smiled grimly to himself as he realized that Pidge had been all over that story days ago. It made his estimation of the girl go up; she certainly knew her stuff.

But pictures of sterile hospital rooms and interviews with white-coated doctors weren’t going to help his nightmares tonight, so he kept scanning through until at some point he fell asleep there on the couch.

Shiro woke up briefly, broken out of a dream he couldn’t recall, and rolled over so he was lying on the bed properly. There, he had pillows to collapse face first into and he fell back asleep easily.

His internal clock was off and he couldn’t tell how much later it was that he awoke again, this time with the gut feeling that something was wrong.

He stayed still for a moment, taking in the chill all around him, and fought the urge to curl in on himself. If he opened his eyes back in the hallway in the Otherworld...

In a cold sweat, he stayed unmoving for as long as he could. He didn’t have Pidge’s numbers on his arm any more; there was no way he could remember the proper sequence to escape again. But if he stayed here, out in the open, anything could come along and find him.

He swayed and staggered to catch his balance, opening his eyes and flailing in the sudden realization that he was already standing upright. Facing him was his own distorted reflection, eyes wide, hair unnaturally white, expression stricken. Shiro stumbled backward, hit a metal wall, and braced himself against it as he gulped in air to fight off his growing hysteria.

He was in an elevator.

Standing up.

Had he awakened in the middle of a sleepwalking episode? And if so, which world was he currently in?

Voices were approaching from the outside, a murmur of ordinary conversation, but it was enough to set his nerves alight with panic. Shaking, he turned to face the corner just as the doors opened.

He couldn’t remember the numbers at all.

It wasn’t safe to look at anyone or talk to them. What were the chances that Pidge was nearby? He’d been rescued by her once, but he couldn’t count on it again.

“Good morning,” said a pleasant voice. In Shiro’s peripheral vision a pair of people got on the elevator; one reached past him for the button panel.

He nodded his head in acknowledgement -- it wasn’t speaking so it didn’t count, right? -- and backed up so they couldn’t accidentally touch him. Through the doors he caught a glimpse of white walls and green doors. His own apartment building? It looked familiar.

“You doing okay, man?” one of the other passengers asked. “You look kinda spooked.”

“I’m fine,” Shiro said to no one in particular, breathing in relief as the elevator closed and moved down a floor to the lobby.

“Take it easy. Midterms can really take it out of you,” the man said as he and his partner left. Shiro nodded again, still standing in his corner of the elevator.

Midterms. Ha. He hadn’t had to worry about them since the accident had taken all his saved-up college funds. He’d broken his dreams along with half the bones in his body, and there was no way to stitch together money, put it in a cast that itched and ached all through the night until it got better.

But at least when the elevator doors closed and Shiro was alone again, he was able to talk himself down from his panic. There had been other people milling in the lobby; he’d heard cars passing on the street. This wasn’t the Otherworld, dead and silent.

Pressing the second floor button, he exited the elevator into a hallway that he’d grown very familiar with. His apartment was at the very end, the green paint faded, the doorknob worn, but clean and safe and home.

Shiro opened the door just long enough to satisfy himself that everything was still there and someone hadn’t broken in while he’d been out sleepwalking. Because that’s all it was. He’d done similar stuff before, over the past several weeks, and it was just a bad chance that he happened to wake up in a similar place to the Otherworld elevator.

He touched the lion pendant through his shirt, making sure it was still there. Taking his keys and wallet, he locked the apartment and headed down the hall back toward the elevator before hesitating. He took the stairs to the lobby instead.

Out on the sidewalk in front of the building, he paused again. Would it be polite to show up unannounced at Allura’s doorstep so early in the morning?

But it wasn't like he had anywhere else to be. He might as well try to be on good terms with one of the few people in his current friend circle.

It turned out that his doubts were unfounded, as Pidge was sitting on the leaf-covered porch when he arrived.

“Hey, stranger,” she called. Her computer was perched on her lap like a witch’s familiar, balanced there with one hand on the keyboard while she waved to him.

“Morning,” Shiro answered, cutting through the yard and taking the porch steps two at a time. “Can I talk to you?”

Pidge motioned grandly to the folding chair opposite her, cushion faded and speckles of rust spotting the frame. “Talk away.”

Shiro sat down and stretched out his legs. Instead of sleeping, who knew how long his body had been sleepwalking unconsciously, exhausting muscles that desperately needed to rest. Now his whole body was suffused with a subdued ache that only served to remind him of just how out of his depth he was.

“You okay?” Pidge leaned forward and looked a moment away from resting a hand on his knee.

“Fine,” he replied automatically, then groaned and rubbed a hand over his face. “Actually, I'm not fine. I was sleepwalking again this morning and I thought I was back in the Otherworld. Is there any magic way to stop that from happening?”

Pidge shrugged. “Short of handcuffing you to your bed, I have no ideas. Helping other people hasn't ever been a specialty of mine. Allura might know something.” Shiro must have made a face at that because Pidge chuckled. “You’ll get used to her, I promise. I didn’t really care for her at first either, but she’ll grow on you.”

“I hope so. She’s been nice to me; I feel bad that I don’t like her more for it.” He laced his fingers together, trying to find a pattern in the thin scars that crisscrossed his hands. If nothing else, it made him feel a little less guilty that Pidge had had the same initial reaction to Allura. Maybe it was just something about her aura?

Aura, ha. It would fit with the whole rest of this business.

“Like I said, you’ll get used to it. You may not be seeing a whole lot of her anyway, if I’m supposed to be dragging you all over the Otherworld with me.”

Something unpleasant curled in Shiro’s stomach. “What kind of missions are we talking about here?”

“Mainly recon stuff. Believe me, it’s a bad idea to attract attention to yourself on either side of reality, so everything we do is going to be low profile. Also...” She dropped her voice and glanced at the living room window behind Shiro. He had to resist the urge to turn around and make sure the crawling sensation on his back was only in his mind.

Pidge shifted forward in her chair and continued quietly, “Allura always says that the mission is the most important thing. It’s hard to find opportunities to cross over safely so we should take the most of every opportunity, and stuff like that. But my philosophy is that it’s better to retreat early at the slightest hint of anything going sideways.”

“Live to scout another day.”

“Yep. We’ll always get another try at the mission. But once we’re dead, we’re dead.” She straightened back up, glancing at her laptop screen, giving Shiro a chance to digest the information. Allura really was a taskmaster, but he supposed that if she was running this operation, she had to be tough. Although she did seem to have a lot of intrinsic knowledge about the Otherworld... shouldn’t that make her _more_ cautious, since she knew so much about its dangers?

Regardless, Shiro wasn’t in any position to take sides, and Pidge’s trepidation of voicing her opinions aloud indicated that she and Allura had probably argued about this a lot before. And Allura was in charge, after all, so he might as well stay on her side. Maybe it would help his chances of survival.

The laptop beeped, some operation completed, and Pidge closed it and reached for the computer bag at her feet. “Looks like the hospital is going to be our first mission together. I just read all the files and it’s definitely something to look into.”

“Today?”

“No time like the present.”

Shiro nodded mutely and followed her down the steps and around the back of the house, where the driveway ended in a two-car garage. Clicking her key ring, Pidge opened the automatic doors and revealed the pair of cars inside.

One was clearly Allura’s, a luxury sedan with black and silver detailing, subdued but elegant. The other vehicle was... mostly a Jeep. It looked like it had been cobbled together from pieces of half a dozen different cars, but the patchwork job didn’t look shoddy. In fact, the car was built like a tank, with metal rivets sunk into the bumper, doors thick enough to be classified as armored, and an array of searchlights mounted on the rollbar.

Shiro stepped forward and rapped his knuckles lightly on the hood; the sound barely echoed off of solid metal. He made a noise of appreciation. “Did you build this?”

“I helped. Mainly Dad and my brother, Matt, built it. It was meant to be an offroading buggy -- supposed to be a fun thing to do on weekends. Now it’s...” She looked down, concentrating on fitting her key into the door.

Shiro looked at the jeep again. Underneath the bolts and paneling were traces of bright blue paint, vibrant and cheerful. He’d had no idea that Pidge had a brother, but now Shiro could imagine him: fun and dorky, the kind of person who would rather build his own mud racer from scratch and who would enjoy every minute of it.

The horn beeped and he startled. Pidge waved at him through the windshield and Shiro slung himself into the passenger seat, slamming the heavy door behind him. What would Pidge have been like before all this happened to her? Before she’d been orphaned? Before her brother’s legacy had been turned into something more fit for a battleground than the backwoods?

“Buckle up,” Pidge said, but Shiro had put his seatbelt on automatically as soon as he’d sat down.

“This hospital, is it the same one Hunk mentioned several days ago? I remember a headline about an outbreak of some kind.”

Pidge stopped for a moment at the end of the driveway, looked both ways, then cautiously pulled out. “Yeah, that’s the one. Only you don’t have to worry about diseases, if that’s what’s got you. Lance pegged that place for leys a long time ago and we just never got around to it, so it’s pretty definitely the Otherworld at work here.”

“Hm.” Shiro was trying his best to stay engaged in the conversation, but that was hard when the interior of the car was crushing in on him, feeling like it was going to squeeze the air from his lungs until his ribs cracked. With a glance at Pidge to see if she minded, he rolled down the window a few inches and the breeze helped somewhat.

“We’re going to get as close as we can in this world, then cross over and do some scouting. If anything gets bad, the whole hospital is one big rift, so getting out of the Otherworld will be easy.”

“Why scout at all? Why not just seal it up and be done?”

Pidge frowned, leaning forward in the seat as she glanced at the mirrors before changing lanes. “Allura likes to know what we’re up against. The more we can understand about how the Otherworld works, she thinks it’ll be easier to predict future incidents and deal with them before they become too serious.”

“You sound like you don’t believe her.”

“I kinda do. I mean, that’s why I was at the elevator when I found you -- according to Allura’s previous data, another incident was overdue at that location. I’m still not convinced it wasn’t pure chance, but... I dunno. The statistics say that she’s probably right.”

“So I guess it comes down to your differences of opinion: which comes first, mission or people?”

“Pretty much.”

Pidge let the conversation die down after that, and Shiro rested his chin in his hand and looked out the window. He hadn’t been in a lot of cars since the accident, but Pidge was a conscientious driver and the scenery of the city was calming his nerves. Not that the decrepit downtown area was anything special to look at, but it was far, far better than dark trees as far as the eye could see. He shuddered and reached for the radio dial as a distraction, but Pidge slapped his hand away as the jeep slowed to a crawl.

Up ahead, the road was blocked by a fleet of low black motorcycles parked sideways across both lanes. Dark figures in hoods were standing around like they were guarding a military checkpoint and Shiro didn’t know whether he wanted to laugh or turn tail and run. Aberrations were supposed to stay in the Otherworld; shit like this just didn’t happen in the streets of a big city.

The jeep came to a stop and Pidge unrolled her window a bit, enough to talk and be heard but not wide enough for someone to reach in. Shiro didn’t blame the way her hands were white-knuckle tight on the steering wheel or the way she was staring straight ahead with her jaw set.

He pulled himself more upright, making the most out of his broad shoulders, and watched closely as one of the masked figures approached the driver’s window.

“The road is closed from here. You can’t go any farther.”

“I really need to get to the hospital,” Pidge said, keeping her tone passive. “Can’t you let me through? Please?”

“Sorry, but no. Go home. This isn’t a safe place to be.”

Shiro was about to argue more on their behalf, maybe make up some fake excuse for why he had to get to the hospital immediately, but Pidge was already putting the car into reverse.

“We’re going to leave, just like that?” he asked as Pidge rolled up the windows and drove away, scowling.

“Those guys are bad news. They’re a street gang that doesn’t mind using violence to get what they want. If they say the road is closed, it’s closed for good.”

Shiro stayed quiet for several minutes. Even in the Otherworld, he’d seen Pidge shaken but never truly scared. This gang must be something else for her to be reluctant to cross them.

As they passed a series of abandoned warehouses, Shiro reached toward her and motioned to a cross-street up ahead. “If you’re willing to do some trespassing, there’s a detour that can probably get us around the roadblock. It’s... a dangerous road, but at least it’ll keep up out of those guys’ way.”

“Here?” Pidge slowed and made the turn, tires crunching over gravel as she guided the jeep along a narrow alley that looked like it hadn’t been used since the heyday of the downtown fifty years ago.

“Now turn right and there’s the road up ahead. It’ll take us a bit out of our way, but it’s still quicker than fighting interstate traffic to get to the hospital.”

“Yeah, traffic’s not really my thing,” Pidge muttered. “I was never one of those kids who wanted a car for their sixteenth birthday.”

 _Was Matt like that?_ Shiro wanted to ask, but bit his tongue. It didn’t really matter; if Pidge didn’t want to bring it up to him, he wouldn’t pester her. So instead he commented, “You’re over sixteen? When I first saw you I guessed you were twelve, maybe thirteen.”

Pidge didn’t take her eyes from the road, so it received the death glare intended for Shiro. “I turned sixteen months ago.”

Shiro chuckled. “You’re a baby!”

“Am not!”

“Ok, then I guess you’re just short.”

Pidge pouted. “You have a point but I’m never gonna admit it.”

“You just did.”

She scowled again but there was a smile lurking underneath it. Shiro appreciated the banter too, and not just as a way of getting to know her. The dingy skyline of downtown had given way to trees, a small pocket of untamed nature that had stubbornly persisted even amid the city’s growth. If the air inside the car had been suffocating before, now it was downright deadly. Long shadows of branches reached across the road and crawled like spiders along the hood of the jeep.

He remembered this place all too well. Up ahead, around a couple of curves, there would be a caution sign warning of a sharp bend in the road. There had been a carcass in the road, a deer that had failed to leap to safety in time, and a huge vulture feeding on it. And as he’d gotten close --

Shiro glanced at where Pidge was sitting upright in the driver’s seat, peering over the hood of the jeep as she followed the winding road. She was unaware of how painfully tight his left hand was clenched, how his heartbeat had picked up ever since entering the shadows of the trees. Just as well. She was competent. If Shiro kept to himself, this would all pass quickly with nothing to be afraid of.

The road sign was still out of sight around a bend when the car’s engine started spitting and groaning. Pidge shifted gears quickly but the jeep inexorably slowed to a crawl and despite her attempts at accelerating or braking, it ground to a stop on the side of the road.

Shiro inhaled sharply and reached to stop her when she opened the door.

“What?” Pidge asked, glancing at how he slowly withdrew his hand. “I need to see if something’s overheating.”

She circled around to the front of the jeep and lifted the hood. The sheet of metal obscured her from view and Shiro was suddenly alone in the car, trapped in the middle of the woods. Throwing the door open, he came around to join her at the front, where she was frowning and poking at the jeep’s innards.

“Probably broke a belt or something.” She ran a greasy hand through her hair. “I honestly don’t know that much about cars. I’ll call Hunk to come pick us up and see if he can fix this.”

“Yeah, it’s... probably nothing,” Shiro said. He hoped that his voice didn’t give away the tremors shaking his body, but if Pidge noticed anything, she didn’t comment. Instead she pulled out her cell and dialed, leaving Shiro to his own devices.

He had his hand on the passenger door when it dawned on him how dark it had suddenly become. It was impossible to see the sky through the dense canopy, but if he had to guess, a storm was about to break -- the atmosphere was holding its breath, the tinge of electricity grazing sharply across his skin. Shiro pulled the door open and stared into the interior of the jeep, all beaten metal and leather seats the color of old blood, and he couldn’t move any farther.

“Hey! Hey, Shiro! You okay?”

Startled, Shiro turned wide eyes to where Pidge was tugging on his sleeve, worry in her hazel eyes.

“I think I lost you for a minute. You look really pale. Are you okay? Need to sit down?”

“Um, yeah.” He stumbled back, catching himself on the hood, and slowly letting his legs give out and take him to the ground. Pidge shut the door -- thank _goodness_ \-- and took a knee next to him.

“Here,” she said, digging a protein bar out of one of her pockets. “See if this helps.”

Shiro took it but didn’t have the heart to tell her that he couldn’t stomach it right now. Lack of food wasn’t the issue here. This was a feeling of dread that sat on his chest and crushed all his internal organs. His hands were sweaty and he couldn’t help the way they were fisted too tight, fingernails biting into his palms, unable to relax.

He wanted to tell her what was going on but the words wouldn’t come. There was a faint fear that if he talked about it, the words could bring it to life and he would have to live through it again. The hours alone. The agonizing pain. The knowledge that no one would come in time, that he would die there by himself while the damned black bird mocked him through the broken windshield.

Pidge stayed with him for a while, but his unfocused gaze and nonverbal responses to her questions finally drove her away, back to poking at the jeep’s engine as they waited for help to come. Shiro reached up to the lion pendant on his chest and was startled to find that it had gone cold against his skin. Regardless, he clutched it in his good hand.

Amid all this magic and superstition, maybe it was a talisman that could help him. It had been found at the time of his rescue, after all.

Or maybe the lion had _caused_ the accident.

Or maybe it was only a piece of lifeless stone, utterly meaningless.

But rubbing the smooth edges of it helped his anxiety somewhat, enough to keep himself in the moment and aware of his surroundings. He could hear the slow rumble of Hunk’s pickup as it approached from the way they’d come, pulling over just behind the jeep. Two pairs of boots hit the ground, the solid tread of Hunk’s stride and a lighter step that had to be Lance.

Shiro forced his eyes open and stood up, rubbing the cramps out of his knees. Hunk had already joined Pidge in rummaging through the jeep’s engine, their conversation a rise and fall of technical terms and quiet banter. Lance was standing off to the side and peering down the road, toward the signpost; his body language was fully alert, giving the impression of a guard on duty.

Leaving the two mechanics to their work, Shiro approached Lance, taking care to scuff his boots so as not to startle the other man. That precaution turned out to be unnecessary, though, as Lance turned to him with a small smile of recognition.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been on this road before,” the Elf commented. His blank eyes slid back to where the road disappeared in a sharp bend among the trees. “There are traces of leys up ahead.”

Shiro swallowed. “That’s where I got my... leys,” he said at last. Assuming that his idea was right, and the scars covering his body corresponded to the leys that Lance saw in him.

“Thing is, you don’t just _get_ leys. They have to be put on you for a special purpose and by special means. It basically turns you into a walking rift.”

“That doesn’t sound good. Aren’t you trying to seal all the rifts? How do you seal a person?”

“Some rifts are helpful. Like Pidge’s tattoo.” Lance nodded his head toward where Pidge was handing tools to Hunk. “Allura gave it to her specifically to help when she’s running missions. It lets her slip between reality and the Otherworld without having to find a naturally-occurring rift.”

Reaching up, Shiro pulled the pendant over his head and offered it to Lance. “Do you think this is causing the leys you see around me? It’s the same design as Pidge’s tattoo.”

The Elf took the charm, turning it over in his fingers before handing it back. “There’s definitely something around this trinket. But there’s something around you, too, similar to the pendant but separate.” He frowned. “You’ve got a lot of lines converging around you, more than I’ve ever seen focused on one person. It’s really no wonder you can cross over so easily.”

“Great.” Shiro looped the pendant around his neck. So even without the Elevator Game and aberrations and Otherworld magic, he was still doomed to an uncanny life.

“While they’re still busy, I’m going to go up ahead. I want to see what’s causing this disruption.” Lance started off up the road, in the direction that lay disaster.

Shiro hesitated a moment, fear and concern boiling inside him. Going down this road once had nearly killed him; he didn’t dare test it a second time. But Lance kept going, testing the asphalt underfoot at every step, and there was no way Shiro would let him go alone.

“I don’t suppose you’d consider waiting for backup,” he muttered even though Lance was out of hearing. Shiro tried to hurry to catch up to him, but every step was like sinking into a swamp, each foot harder to move forward than the last.

He shouldn’t be here, he realized, even as he pushed through the tangled shadows of trees that clung to him like spiderwebs. The air itself was getting thicker, stinking of ozone right before a heavy rain.

And it was getting darker, too. Shiro didn’t have a watch but he knew it was too early for the sun to be setting; nevertheless it was hard to see. Up ahead, Lance’s jacket was a pale smudge wavering in the twilight and Shiro reluctantly trotted faster to not lose sight of him.

They were around the bend now, out of sight of the jeep.

Shiro’s pulse picked up as he looked to the side of the road but the sign wasn’t there. Huh. They must be farther away than he’d thought.

“Lance,” he said, finally slowing to a walk at the man’s elbow. “C’mon, let’s go back. It’s hard to see.”

The Elf only chuckled. “We can hold hands if you like. I promise I don’t stumble often.”

Shiro groaned, both at himself and at Lance, but the noise cut off in his throat.

There were white eyes staring at him from the underbrush. Adrenaline rising, Shiro’s body surged into fight-or-flight mode, ready to go off at a hair trigger. But he blinked once and they were gone. Blackberry brambles shivered in the breeze, nothing more.

Lance had kept walking, not noticing Shiro’s momentary freeze. “Rifts are actually pretty rare around here,” he was saying. “I’m kinda surprised there’s one all the way out in the middle of nowhere.”

Shiro darted after him, intending to grab his sleeve and stop him, maybe convince him to rejoin the others. Unbidden, Lance stopped suddenly even before Shiro could reach him.

“Well that’s something.”

Up ahead, the shoulder of the road was marred with a dark smear, a red that looked black in the fading light. There was a broken signpost, nothing more than a jagged stump of metal stuck in the ground, sheared off by a heavy impact. A wide trail of smashed plants showed where a vehicle had careened off the road and disappeared into the underbrush.

And the eyes.

The eyes were back.

Shiro wrapped an arm around Lance’s waist, jerking him backward until his back was pressed to Shiro’s chest.

“Wha--” Lance started to cry out, but Shiro clamped a hand over his mouth and the Elf went still, trusting him enough to not fight back.

A shadowy creature moved out of the brambles up ahead, bent over like it was in pain. It was small, standing maybe four feet tall, and hobbled slowly, but threat emanated from it in waves that were almost physical in their intensity. Shiro gulped and took a step back, dragging Lance with him.

The thing noticed the movement and stared at the two, pupilless eyes unblinking. Lance tried struggling again but Shiro gripped him tighter, throat too constricted to say any word of explanation.

He didn’t know how long they stayed like that, the creature watching him with malevolence while he fought for every breath, but suddenly there was movement. White eyes blinked and flickered out, the shadows swallowing the dark outline of the creature, and it was gone like it had never existed.

“Hey! Let him go!”

Shiro startled and turned toward the voice. Pidge was approaching them, her expression angry as she took in the way Lance was being manhandled.

“I...” Shiro glanced back at the smear on the road, the shattered signpost. If he was standing here, then whose car was down among the trees?

Hearing Pidge’s voice, Lance squirmed out of Shiro’s grasp and stumbled before catching his balance. “What was that all about? Scared me half to death, man.”

What was that thing?

The pendant was burning against his neck, painful but he couldn’t tell if it was hot or cold.

“Shiro!” Pidge shouted his name and that sent a shock through him. He could move again, could gulp air into his starved lungs. The road raced by underfoot, faster and faster with each stride, and the wind screamed at him as he ran headlong away from that awful place.

The jeep and pickup were ahead but their metal frames only promised confinement. He needed _out_ , away from this road, away from where the carrion vulture with human eyes sat on the hood and watched as he slowly bled out where he was pinned in the driver’s seat.

More voices shouting at him, then his vision spun dizzyingly upside down. Shiro grabbed onto Hunk’s shoulders for support as he was carefully carried to the parked vehicles and settled down onto the ground. He tried to get up again to keep running but Hunk held him down, hands firm but gentle on his shoulders, until he subsided.

“It’s okay,” Hunk said, watching as Shiro’s eyes darted sideways, still looking for a way out. “Whatever scared you, it’s not here now.”

“There’s something... in the woods,” Shiro managed to say. Behind Hunk, the trees shivered in the breeze and he kept waiting for blank eyes in blank faces to appear.

“Something? Are Lance and Pidge okay?”

“I don’t know. I think they scared it off. It’s after me; it wants to finish what it started.”

Hunk’s hand returned to his shoulder, giving a little shake. “You’re not talking sense, Shiro. But if something’s here, then I need to go get the others. Wait here.”

“No.” Shiro grabbed his wrist when the dark-skinned man started to stand up. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

That brought Hunk back to his knees. “Dude, three seconds ago you looked ready to have a panic attack. And now you’re saying it’s nothing? Make up your mind!”

“It’s...” Shiro visibly curled in on himself. “I’ve been seeing things. The sleepwalking’s been messing with my head, I think. I panicked over nothing and I’m sorry for worrying you.”

“Hey there, no need to apologize. Happens to the best of us sometimes. To be honest, this atmosphere is kinda creeping me out too.” He laughed nervously and pulled his hand away. “You’re sure everything okay up ahead? No need to go check it out?”

Shiro swallowed. If Pidge hadn’t reacted to the noises in the underbrush, if she hadn’t seen anything, then it must not have been real after all. Just his memories acting up again; the nightmares getting the best of his waking world. “It’s fine,” he said even though his voice was barely a whisper. “There’s nothing there.”

Behind him, beyond the side of the road, leaves rustled in the stillness.

“You wanna sit in the car?” Hunk offered. He was still kneeling in front of Shiro but his posture was anxious. “It’ll probably make you feel safer.”

No no no.

“I’m fine out here.”

“You use that word too much. _Fine_. I’m...” Hunk frowned and shifted, pulling one leg under him as if about to stand up. “If you don’t mind me saying it, something’s up with you. You’ve always looked vaguely like the sky is falling and you’re the only one who can see it.”

It sounded so absurd that Shiro laughed briefly, the sound abrasive in his throat. Hunk looked unsettled and his eyes shifted away again.

“I’ve got a lot of bad things trailing at my heels,” Shiro said at last. “And I keep thinking they’re repeating in real life when really it’s just my mind tricking itself.”

“Would it help to talk about it?”

Shiro glanced at where the road was a tunnel into darkness; no sign of Pidge or Lance returning yet. If all he’d seen was imaginary, he wondered what was keeping them.

“There’s not much to tell.” Well, there was, but nothing that he needed to share beyond the basics. “I was driving this road a year ago when there was an accident. A vulture was eating roadkill and it took off just as I passed. It hit the windshield and I lost control; the car rolled off the road and I was trapped there for several hours until someone saw the wreck and called for help.”

“Gee, that sounds really rough. I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, well the weird part is that no one ever found a reason for the accident. The official report says that I fell asleep at the wheel; the doctors kept telling me I must have dreamed everything. I don’t know what to believe.” He pulled on the cord around his neck until the little lion was visible. “And this guy apparently was created out of thin air. Took two medics to pry him from my grip while I was on the way to the hospital. I’d never seen it before and I have no idea how it got into my paralyzed hand.”

Hunk leaned closer for a better look but shook his head when Shiro started to take off the pendant. “I know nothing about this kind of stuff,” he said, keeping his hands pointedly to himself. “But I’ll swear off doughnuts forever if that thing isn’t linked to the Otherworld somehow. All those sorts of things give off a creepy aura and that’s what I’m feeling right now.”

Shiro tried to smile, glad that he was finally back on keel again and having a mostly normal conversation, when Hunk held up a hand. Holding his breath, Shiro strained to hear anything, but there was only a scuffling in the leaves that had to be his imagination. He could faintly hear voices -- Pidge and Lance making their way back at last.

“I get that you don’t like cars much, but I really want to be going as soon as possible,” Hunk said. He offered a hand and easily pulled Shiro to his feet. “I’m not brave enough for this kind of stuff.”

“Me neither.” But unlike Hunk, he couldn’t just ignore this and hope it would go away. Even if he wasn’t carrying a piece of the Otherworld on a string around his neck, Shiro had a feeling that things would hunt him down eventually no matter where he ran.

“All done!” Pidge announced, leaning with one hand on the jeep’s hood. Her fingernails were crusted with dirt. “One rift signed, sealed, and no longer our problem.”

Hunk leaned toward Shiro and muttered, “That could explain your accident right there. Rifts cause all sorts of unnatural phenomena.”

“I’m just glad it’s over with,” Shiro said. The news that the rift was closed should have settled him, but a creeping feeling of dread still pervaded the air. He was afraid that if he looked too closely, there would be misshapen silhouettes moving among the trees.

“The road should be a whole lot safer now,” Lance said. Somehow he was completely untouched by the atmosphere, which made Shiro think that it was all in his head. If even an Elf couldn’t sense danger, then maybe there was no danger there at all.

Regardless, that didn’t make the cars look any more inviting, especially now that the past was fresh on his mind.

“C’mon, Lance, it’s time we head back to the office.” Hunk turned and headed toward his pickup. “I’ve got a ton of blueprints to look over, and you’ve got to check the status of the seal.”

“Thanks for coming out here, guys,” Pidge called after them. “Hopefully I’ll be able to fix my own car next time.”

“Just let me know when you get back safely. I’m always worried when you go on scouting missions.”

“You’re always worried in general,” Lance said, chuckling as he slid into the passenger seat and pulled the door shut.

Pidge walked past Shiro and laid a hand on the jeep’s door handle. “You good to go?”

Shiro dragged his attention away from listening for anything sneaking up in the underbrush behind them. “Huh? You’re still wanting to go to the hospital after all this?”

“That’s what we came out here for. Plus it’s not like anything happened. I mean, the road should be safer now than it was before, so it should be smooth sailing from here unless the Blades have blocked more than the one road.”

It was getting harder to breathe again, panic compressing into a knot in his chest. The hospital was supposed to contain a big rift, enough that this one was barely noticeable beside it. And he and Pidge were going to head straight toward it?

That morning it had sounded like an okay idea, but here and now all Shiro wanted was to go home. Everything from his bones out to his skin was aching.

“I don’t suppose you’d consider taking a rain check?”

Behind them, Hunk was letting the pickup’s engine idle and he tapped the horn after several minutes. “You two okay there?” he asked, leaning out the window. “I wanna make sure we all get off this road safely.”

Pidge frowned and glared at him, an expression that Shiro felt was in fact directed at himself. But at last she yanked open the jeep and climbed in. “Fine, we’re going home. I need to tell Allura that those thugs are back in town anyway. I’ll drop you off at your place on the way.”

\----

Once out of the cover of the trees, the sky lightened considerably and it turned out to be not even noon yet. Shiro unrolled the window and closed his eyes in the wind that rushed through his hair. Even though the fear from before still lingered, it felt so much better to be away from that place.

Pidge didn’t talk much for the rest of the drive and he could tell that she was annoyed at having to postpone the mission. He understood, he really did -- people were dying at that hospital because of the rift that she had the power to seal. And here he was, nothing more than dead weight slowing her down and fouling up the mission.

If Shiro had felt ashamed about his physical scars before, he felt ten times worse about his mental ones. Why couldn’t he push the past aside and function like a normal person? Instead he panicked at anything out of the ordinary. Had shaking breakdowns that made him completely useless. People had to stop what they were doing to take care of _him_ \-- how could he ever call himself an Alice, make it his job to help others?

He kept his head down and watched the landscape outside change from the old industrial district to the rundown housing that sprawled on the outskirts of campus.

Pidge didn’t talk either, only muttering occasionally as other drivers cut her off or she missed a green light.

“Thanks,” Shiro said as they neared his apartment building. He wanted to say more to her but she pulled over to the side of the road and put on her blinkers, so there was no time for him to do more than grab his jacket and get both feet steady on the sidewalk before she was already pulling away.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, I guess,” he said to himself. The jeep rejoined the flow of traffic, its bright blue bumper, scuffed with dirt, disappearing among the other cars.

Well, there was still time in the day. Might as well get something to eat and then go see if anyone would hire him for half a day. The diner down the street paid well for washing dishes, and if he was lucky they might give him a free dinner to boot.

It seemed strange to be worrying about mundane things like food and how to pay rent when he knew there were supernatural monsters roaming the world. But it wasn’t like Allura was paying him for being an Alice, so day jobs it was.

Shiro’s train of thought was brought to an abrupt end when he reached the top floor of the building and headed down the hall toward his door. Light was streaming out in a thin crack from where the door was standing ajar.

Breath catching, Shiro quieted his steps and stuck close to the wall as he inched closer to his apartment. It seemed quiet inside so he guessed that no one was there and it was safe to nudge the door open.

What lay beyond was utter devastation.

Someone had taken great care to wreck every single thing in the small apartment. Pillows were torn open, table overturned, every book flung from the bookcase, even the walls were gouged with knife marks.

Shiro slipped to his knees in the doorway, half inside and half out. This didn’t seem real, as the chaos refused to settle into something comprehensible. There wasn’t a _reason_ for this level of destruction.

Slowly he brought himself back to his feet, one hand steadying on the doorframe. There wasn’t any point in trying to salvage anything right now; even if it might have helped, he couldn’t bring his mind to focus long enough. All he’d owned, not much but neat and orderly and _his_ \-- this felt like violation.

Had he done something to make people come after him? He didn’t think so. His life was as low-profile as he could make it.

Random vandalism? The mess seemed too deliberate and precise to have been done without reason. So... they were searching for something?

Shiro stepped over the shards of a broken mirror just inside the door as he headed toward the main room. The downside of having a studio apartment was that everything was in one room, no privacy or shelter. The kitchen counter, littered with dishes, was along the opposite wall from the destroyed bookcase. A yard beyond that was the bed, mattress overturned and slashed, and pieces hacked out of the headboard just for the hell of it.

Even the more valuable items -- the tv, some textbooks, the microwave -- had been smashed instead of stolen. Shiro ran a hand through his hair and tugged painfully at his forelock. What could someone possibly want from him? And out of everyone in this neighborhood, in this building, why had he been targeted?

For a moment he gave thought to the idea of cleaning up the mess, salvaging what could be saved, maybe filing a police report and trying to get some help. But the size of that task was terrifyingly daunting and after everything that had already happened that day, he was too exhausted to take action. There wasn’t any second option though; there wasn’t anything that he could do to even temporarily avoid reality, and so, piece by painstaking piece, he started gathering up the fragments of his life.

Maybe there simply was no reason for this.

Maybe, like so much else, it was pure chance.

Then again, maybe it wasn’t.

 


	3. Touched by Tragedy, Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check out the art for this chapter [here](http://ylakerrananimehomo.tumblr.com/post/171494385111/the-third-picture-for-impendingexoduss-fabulous)!!

“What do you mean, broken into?” Indignation was clear in Allura’s voice. “What could anyone possibly have against you?”

Shiro rubbed at the headache blooming inside his skull. “I don’t know. I just... don’t know.”

In front of him, a tray of tea and biscuits was cooling on the table, delicate china perfectly at home in the Victorian house. The smell would normally have been calming but right now it made him nauseous.

“I don’t have much to offer,” Allura continued, “but you’re welcome to stay here until you can get things cleaned up at your apartment.”

Any other time, the offer of a bed and free meals would have been a blessing beyond thought. But right now Shiro would have rather curled up on his shredded mattress if it just meant being out from under Allura’s crystalline stare. It was like being watched by twin jewels, sharp and shiny-faceted. It made his head hurt worse.

“Thanks for the offer,” he forced himself to say. He might as well be polite; it wasn’t like Allura had actually done anything wrong. She wasn’t responsible for his queasy stomach. Shiro shot a glance at the darkened alcove that hid the front door, shadowed by the arching staircase above it. “Is Pidge not here yet?”

“She called after she dropped you off. Apparently the Blade is back in town barricading roads, and she’s gone to see if there’s a way around their stakeouts.”

“I saw them. At the barrier. Are they just ordinary people?”

Allura nodded tightly. “For the most part, yes. But they have just enough knowledge to be dangerous. They think that anything touched by the Otherworld -- Elves, Alices, even people who cross over unintentionally -- is tainted and must be destroyed.”

She paused and Shiro shifted uncomfortably in the silence. “I’m guessing that ‘destroyed’ means ‘killed’.”

“Yes.” The answer was emphatic and Allura’s lip curled up into a snarl. “They kill anything they deem worthy of death and they follow no laws but their own. If they get wind you’re an Alice, they will hunt you down relentlessly. For your own sake, stay far from them. Even if they don’t come after you for Otherworld reasons, they might decide to kill you just for the fun of it.”

She stopped for breath and Shiro felt his mouth go dry in the silence. He and Pidge had really dodged a bullet back at the barricade, it seemed. Those guys hadn’t _looked_ like killers, not exactly... well, maybe a little. He vowed to remember Allura’s words for the future.

“I hope that Pidge can find an opening to get to the hospital,” Allura continued. “If she can, we’ll be able to keep up our work covertly. We can’t call off the mission and risk more people dying. She’ll have to find a workaround.”

“And if she can’t? Are we going to let a street gang rule our lives? People are dying in that hospital!” Shiro felt righteous anger coursing through him. “Isn’t this what the cops are for?”

But Allura only shook her head and stared bitterly into her tea. “The Blades are smart. Any crimes they commit, they cover up or worm their way out of. The police don’t even have them on the radar. And I don’t see that changing any time soon -- if anyone dared speak out against the Blades, they’d be killed next. I’ve gotten used to keeping my head down when they come to town.”

The conversation died down and Shiro couldn’t think of anything to say to fill the void. Learning about the Blades wasn’t really helpful for any of the problems at hand; it was just one more thing he would have to avoid if he wanted to stay in one piece. He picked up a biscuit, now thoroughly cold, and nibbled at it to give himself an excuse for not talking.

His mind kept going back to the wanton destruction of his apartment. Most of the stuff was replaceable, provided he could scrape together enough money to cover necessities. He’d have to talk to the building manager and explain that the knife marks gouged into the walls weren’t his fault and shouldn’t be taken out of his security deposit...

Knife marks.

The Blade. Too fitting, right?

“Probably a dumb question, but why are they called Blades?”

Allura stirred sugar into her tea and watched as the miniature cyclone died down. “I’m not sure.” She sounded tired. “That’s the name they took for themselves. An old reference to an old god. Nothing that I was ever interested in, for sure.”

Shiro pressed his mouth into a tight line and went back to contemplating the floral arabesques on the tea set. The pieces of this puzzle were laid out clearly before him, he could sense it, but there still wasn’t a big picture. The Blade came to town, saw him at the barricade, then vandalized his house. The chronology fit, but the details were missing. Especially if they were known for killing their targets.

“You look exhausted,” Allura said at last, setting down her teacup and looking at him with what was probably supposed to be a concerned expression. “If you want, you can stay the night here. It’s only fair, since you’re doing Alice work for me.”

Shiro’s mind said _no_ but his body said, “Yes, please.”

Smiling, Allura led the way to the front staircase. “There’s a guest bedroom you can stay in. The decorations are rather... unusual, but I trust it will be better than nothing.”

Shiro followed five steps behind her, slowly up the steep stairs. Despite wearing heels, Allura’s steps made no sound as she ascended. The top floor was a long hallway with door along both sides and a tall, thin window at the far end. It let in mottled greenish light, tinted by the magnolia that towered over the rear of the house.

“Here you go,” Allura said, opening the first door on the right and ushering him in. “Pidge’s brother stayed here for a while so the place still has his unique touch. Just don’t touch the computer -- Pidge won’t be happy if you do.”

“All right. And thanks for putting me up, I owe you.”

Allura smiled and turned away, gliding down the stairs like an apparition, leaving Shiro to look around his temporary room. He could see what Allura meant by unusual decorations, and he tried to stifle a chuckle. The walls were plastered with band posters and lengthy printouts of computer data. A large-scale map of the city took up most of the wall above the bed, while a glossy print of the Milky Way glimmered next to a bookcase full of computer towers and technical handbooks.

The bed itself was clean and well-kept, like the rest of the house, and Shiro flopped down face-first with a muffled groan. He thought about taking a nap, trying to fight off the headache, then helping Allura with dinner. Even if he wasn’t the best cook, he needed to do _something_ to repay her hospitality.

He curled up there on top of the blankets, sinking slightly into the down mattress. Just fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty. Then he’d be ready to fight his way through the rest of the day.

Except...

Opening his eyes, he was met by the rich reddish light of early sunset. He’d overslept by several hours, but at least his head had stopped pounding. He was grateful for that for all of three seconds before the rest of his surroundings registered.

He was on the front lawn of Allura’s house, lying amid mulching leaves and patches of dirt on the small slope that overlooked the road. There were cars parked along the sidewalk but the surrounding houses looked empty and lifeless. Shiro shuffled to his knees and then pulled back to the shelter of the porch. For some reason the air felt oppressive and he instinctively feared bringing attention to himself.

Across the street, the dark windows of the houses watched him like eyeless skulls.

He’d been here before. The atmosphere tasted thick in his mouth, dusty and dulled even though the sky was lit with vivid colors. Silence pervaded his very bones. The Otherworld.

Shiro stood up and haltingly went up the steps to the porch, but he couldn’t force his hand to touch the doorknob. Allura’s house felt just as foreboding as all the others. Whatever was hiding in the darkened interior should stay hidden. He turned around and hurried around the side of the house to the garage, trying to ignore how his neck prickled when his back was to the large bay window.

Of course the jeep was gone and the luxury sedan was locked. Shiro didn’t know if he really wanted to be driving anyway; the noise and movement were sure to draw eyes his way.

Only, he didn’t know how he was certain that there were eyes looking for him. Something about the crawling feeling in his gut. It felt like being hunted and made him jump at every shadow as the treetops rustled far above.

He could hazily remember the location of the apartment building where he’d first met Pidge. It wasn’t that long of a walk from here and he could take back alleys out of the open. But without the numbers to play the elevator game, he had a feeling he’d only end up worse off than he currently was.

Shiro crouched in the shelter of the garage door and rested his head against the wall. What options did he have? Sure he might be able to stay quiet forever, but even if nothing found him, there was still no way out. His chances of running into another Alice were slim to none, and he didn’t have the courage to wander aimlessly hoping to run into someone.

He really, _really_ wished that he’d gotten to accompany Pidge on a few scouting missions so he’d have some idea what to do in a situation like this. Instead, he’d only been treated to her occasionally longwinded explanations, Allura’s tea and biscuits, and utterly no idea what he was doing.

All that left was the hospital rift. He might be able to find it and... throw himself in? Do whatever people did with rifts when they wanted to cross over.

But it was also _the hospital_.

The place where Pidge said things were crossing over from the Otherworld and killing people.

At the very least, if monsters were crossing over, maybe he could too... assuming he survived long enough to reach the rift. But if it was a choice between that and hiding in Allura’s garage until he starved, he might as well give it a try.

The words _die fighting_ echoed in his head but he refused to think too hard about that. There would be no dying today nor any time soon, thank you very much.

The lion pendant dragged at his neck and left a cold spot where it rested against his skin.

\----

Shiro had chosen to take the main road to the hospital. Just the thought of the back road through the woods had him in shivers; if his accident had been caused by something crossing over, he definitely didn’t want to be on the Otherworld side of that.

Of course, the main road was a lot more open so it was slower going. Maybe it was pointless in a city so completely dead, but Shiro stopped at every alley, every side street, every bit of shelter where something could be hiding, and made sure there were no signs of movement before he pressed forward. At that rate, it should have been nightfall by the time he was a quarter of the way there, but the red in the sky lingered. It had dulled somewhat, now more of a brownish tinge, but there was no sign of imminent night.

There was no reason why there _wouldn’t_ be night in a place like this. It would make things a hundred times creepier and give the demons a better aesthetic to build bonfires and dance around them. Shiro grinned at the thought, then caught himself and frowned. This was no laughing matter, even if his overstressed brain was cracking from the pressure. He had to stay focused.

Huge warehouses loomed to his right, just as dilapidated in the Otherworld as they were in the real one. Up ahead was where the Blades had set up their roadblock, and he belatedly thought to duck for cover. Allura had said the gang was _mostly_ normal people, but he couldn’t risk it if they had Alices.

He shuffled around behind a large, low sign for a now-defunct construction company until he could see down the road while still remaining hidden. There was no sign of roadblocks or anything else unusual in the road, just asphalt gray-brown with dirt as it slowly curved away between the buildings. Shiro headed down the road; there was no sidewalk here so he had to walk in the road itself, keeping close to the curb and poised to dart away at the first sign of life on the road.

Glancing back over his shoulder at the unnatural sunset, he caught sight of dark dots barely visible against the sky. Birds? Probably not, given what else he knew about this world. Whatever they were, they were too far away to tell their size or shape, and Shiro hoped that they couldn’t see him either. Even hawks didn’t have eyes that good, he told himself, but there was no deluding himself into thinking those were hawks.

He needed to keep moving, put more distance between himself and the flying specks. If he could make it to the hospital, he could stay inside out of sight of the sky, and he’d be safe.

Well, safe was a relative term.

A few dozen yards beyond where the roadblock had been in the real world, he came across footprints, small and dainty and surprisingly human. The prints were slightly darker than the surrounding surface, but there was no trace of moisture or any other reason for the discoloration. They were simply there, following the edge of the road where he was walking, continuing in an even pattern as far as he could see.

Nope, not unsettling at all.

Shiro had no choice but to follow the prints, keeping a watchful eye both on them and on the road ahead. Just because the marks seemed innocent wasn’t an excuse to trust them to be what they seemed. It didn’t help that he kept accidentally treading on them, his worn sneakers somehow placing themselves squarely on the footprints despite his revulsion.

Crossing to the other side of the road was an option, but he didn’t want to. As bad as it was seeing the fairy footprints glimmer in the dust, it would be worse to _not_ see them. Because it would be just his luck to follow too closely and run over the heels of whatever -- whoever -- was leaving the trail.

So Shiro didn’t have a choice but to keep walking, senses straining for any hint of life around him, while the footprints tiptoed alongside.

Except... they were fading out. As he watched, the one in front of him seemed to dissolve into the asphalt, leaving no trace of its existence. Then the next one disappeared too. Behind him, there was only empty road. In front of him, the footprints were fading and he jogged to keep up, always a step behind the last one. It was strange; the marks had been so unsettling at first, but they’d quickly become friendly. They were a sign of life in this forsaken land, and Shiro didn’t want to be all alone again.

He picked up the pace, lengthening his stride into a run. At any moment he expected his body to give out, chronic pain making itself known again, but his steps stayed smooth. It was a welcome surprise, the first one he’d had in days. Of course, he wasn’t able to enjoy it much, because even if his body was free from pain, his mind was running on pure stress and adrenaline. Even if the only place he could feel whole again was the Otherworld, he would happily go back to a life of misery if it meant never worrying about ghosts and demons.

The footprints were still fading out when Shiro slowed down to catch his breath. The road wound between abandoned buildings and small stands of overgrown trees that had once been decorative before nature had taken over. It was still better than the shortcut. The hospital was just ahead, looming large and dark in the eternal dusk.

Hopefully the owner of the footprints would turn off the road, or go to the hospital and cross over, so Shiro wouldn’t have to worry any more. With his goal so close, he was tempted to throw caution to the wind, but in his semi-exhausted state that was a bad idea. If he managed to attract unwanted attention now, he was too tired to run for it. Fighting briefly crossed his mind but it was more of a wild thought than a serious idea. Even if he threw a punch or two that actually connected, how much would that damage a supernatural entity? Yeah, he was totally out of his league here.

Not like that was terribly new.

At least the sun wasn’t going down. Or maybe it wasn’t even the sun at all. Come to think of it, while the sky was the dull red of post-sunset, there was no sign of anything in the sky. No moon or stars, no brighter tinge at the horizon to indicate the sun’s presence. The light suffused the atmosphere like the air itself was glowing. Shiro frowned at that but refused to dwell on it. There was no point trying to make sense of this world; as long as there was light coming from _somewhere_ , that was all that mattered. That, and getting home.

He was still catching his second wind and trying to judge the distance to the hospital when he noticed an added brightness to the air. There was a faint blue aura settling up ahead, focused around a covered alcove. The sign above the awning said something about a pizzeria, but the letters were faded and dim in the light.

Everything in Shiro screamed not to get any closer.

But the trail of footprints ended up ahead, right at the entrance to the alcove, and the last ones faded out as he watched. Maybe whoever had been walking had gone inside? ...Which meant they were waiting, hidden behind the darkened glass of the restaurant, in a perfect position to watch the road for unsuspecting travelers.

Shiro followed where the footprints had been, moving slower as he approached the door. It was a bad idea, it was a very _very_ bad idea, but he wanted to satisfy his curiosity. Maybe it was another Alice, just as lost as he was. Maybe it would be someone friendly, like Pidge had been. Maybe he didn’t care any more. This place was getting to him.

The glass door was standing ajar and the interior beyond was lit with an unearthly blue light. It looked like an ordinary pizza joint, if somewhat run down: black and white tiled floor, a few tables and bench seats, and a long low counter that divided the eating area from the kitchen. It was also deserted, like everything else in this world.

Shiro stepped inside, carefully making sure that the door stayed open behind him. Inside, it even smelled like pizza, which eased his nerves somewhat. Wouldn’t it be weird to find that a random restaurant was the one spot of normalcy in this place?

He nearly chuckled at the thought, before suddenly freezing in place.

There was someone else here.

Sitting at a table in the far left corner, back turned to the front door. The glow seemed to be emanating from the figure, and despite the cold tint it laid on colors, it was easy to see that the person’s hair was stark white.

Just like Allura’s.

Just like the creature’s in the elevator.

Shiro backed out of the door and didn’t breathe until he was outside, shielded by the brick walls of the alcove. He ought to turn and run, or maybe sneak around back of the restaurant. Or even get on hands and knees and crawl past, staying under the windows, until he was out of sight and he could sprint all the way to the hospital and its dubious safety.

But instead, he was spinning arguments around in his head of all the reasons why he should go back in there and confront the woman. Sure, Pidge had instructed him not to talk to Otherworld people, but it wasn’t like his grave could get any deeper. He had just as much right as anyone here to go into whatever buildings he wanted -- he was tired of running in fear from the unknown.

There was also the thought in the back of his head that the hospital wasn’t the best course of action, since it was the site of a lot of death in the real world. Shiro wasn’t on good terms with hospitals at the best of times and it would be _terrific_ if he had a meltdown while being chased through surgery wards by howling demons.

All things considered, the woman sitting in the pizzeria seemed tame.

Even if she did have glittery footprints.

Shiro sneaked back inside, half expecting her to have disappeared in the few moments he’d been outside. But she was still there, face turned away toward the hospital, sitting patiently in one of the booths.

It was easy to get close to her. Surprisingly easy, and Shiro stopped uneasily when he got within arm’s reach. If there was the chance of hidden defense mechanisms, he didn’t want to get stabbed or sprayed with poison or whatever the hell could happen in this world.

“Excuse me,” he said. His voice barely held a hint of cracking.

The woman whirled to her feet, standing and spinning to face him in one easy movement. Face to face, she looked just like Allura: same dark skin, piercing eyes, same regal bearing that made Shiro feel small in her presence. But this woman showed no signs of Allura’s hospitality or kindness, and burned onto her cheeks were familiar markings.

Twin lions, crouched with one paw raised as if to ward off evil.

They were identical to his pendant and Pidge’s tattoo. Alice? It was about time he had a stroke of luck!

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” Shiro said, trying to be polite. Whether this woman was Alice or aberration, she was probably stronger than him and he didn’t want to piss her off.

“You didn’t.”

Right. She totally meant to act startled.

“Your talisman did.”

Shiro blinked at her. “Come again?”

She gestured at her own neck. “The lion. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what? I’m the one who stalked you here, more or less...”

“Lions are only given through suffering. I had hoped that the witch would stop once she’d caught me, but...” She shook her head and made eye contact. “Why aren’t you scared of me this time?”

Oh, so she remembered the elevator too. Shiro swallowed and shuffled back a step, aware that he was within easy reach of her should she decide to attack.

“I figured that talking to you now couldn’t make my situation any worse. With luck, maybe you can help me.”

“Or I might have my own problems to deal with.” Her eyes flickered over him and he could swear he felt it like cut glass against his skin. “How much do you know, and how far are you willing to go to save yourself?”

“I... don’t understand,” Shiro stammered, feeling more and more like this had been a bad idea. “I was only thinking that you could show me the way back to the real world. Do you know the numbers for the Elevator Game?”

The woman -- he couldn’t help thinking of her as Allura, even though the air around her was completely different from the real Allura -- shook her head. “Maybe I’m only in this world because I’m as trapped as you.”

Okay. Not good. “But you’re the only other person I’ve ever met here so I figured you --”

“I’m not an Alice, if that’s what you’re thinking. But I’m also not a demon, so you can rest easy.”

“What does that leave?”

She smiled quietly and looked away, out the window toward the hospital. “That’s up to you to figure out. I don’t give away all my secrets to strangers.”

“My name’s Shiro.”

The woman bowed her head in acknowledgment but ignored his outstretched hand. “Allura.”

“That’s a pretty unusual name. It’s strange that you’re the second person I’ve met --”

A low rumble in the distance cut him off. It sounded like thunder moving closer, a steady march of muttering noise that made his ears hurt.

“Don’t stay in one place too long. The aberrations are gathering and they’re on the hunt.”

Startled, Shiro turned around when Allura’s voice came from the doorway behind him. Somehow she was over there now, one hand on the doorframe as she leaned out to look up and down the street.

“It’s clear for now but you need to hurry.”

“And go where?” Shiro asked helplessly, spreading his hands. “I’m totally lost here and I don’t want to die!”

Allura shrugged. “Where were you going when you started following my trail? I assume you have a plan.”

“Pidge mentioned that the hospital was having a lot of stuff crossing over and killing people. I know it sounds like an awful idea, but I was thinking of going there and finding a way to cross over too. Maybe you could come with me? I mean, if you’re trapped here otherwise...?”

“Just go ahead and say it. You’re too afraid to go alone.”

Shiro bristled. “I’m not afraid. I was heading there on my own anyway.”

“Yet you would rather risk talking to me instead of continuing on. You’re doing all you can to procrastinate.”

“Fine.” This was quickly turning into one of the strangest conversations Shiro had ever had, and that was even including the ones he’d had with the real-world version of Allura. He pushed his way past her and stepped out onto the sidewalk. The sky was still red, still ominous, but there was a brighter glow on the horizon. A purplish tinge touched the sky -- not near the hospital, thank goodness, but close enough to it to be unsettling.

“Nice weather,” he muttered, hands in pockets. Allura showed no signs of leaving the restaurant but he wanted to give her plenty of time to make up her mind, just in case she decided to be helpful.

“That’s the Emperor. He’s coming closer. I think the witch has summoned him and it’s simply taking a long time for the apocalypse to arrive.” She turned to see Shiro’s reaction, and relented at the confusion on his face. “That thing on the horizon, he’s one of the most powerful entities in this world. He’s not really even a creature any more -- it’s an event. The end, you could say. When he reaches a rift large enough for him to pass through, he’ll come into the human world and...” Allura trailed off and lifted one shoulder in a delicate shrug. “He’ll do what all aberrations do, only on a much larger scale.”

“Can’t something be done to stop him?” Shiro asked, as a nameless fear ran through him. Even Pidge wouldn’t be brave enough to take on something like that.

“He can’t be stopped, only sealed. As long as there aren’t any viable rifts around, he’ll pass by and keep moving.”

“The hospital rift?”

“Not big enough for him, don’t worry. Although it will be plenty big for the entourage of lesser aberrations following in his wake.”

Shiro frowned. “So that’s why people started dying there all of a sudden.”

“Probably. It would be best to get that rift sealed before the Emperor gets any closer to it, that’s for sure.”

“Want to help?” Shiro tried to look inviting, but he needn’t have bothered. Next to Allura’s radiating power, he felt small and very naive about this world.

She gave him a look half calculating, half pitying. “How do you know I’m not part of the Emperor’s train? You can’t trust everything people tell you.”

“I guess I’ll have to chance it then. I’d rather have you at my side than at my back.”

That was enough to get a smile out of her, and a look of somewhat appreciation. “Maybe you do have the guts for this job,” she murmured, stepping out and joining him on the sidewalk. “Very well, brave Alice. Lead the way.”

“Thank you.” There wasn’t much else to say, and Shiro didn’t want to annoy Allura now that she was apparently on his side. He started off down the sidewalk, following it to the end of the block where it disappeared and didn’t continue on the other side of the intersection. Back to walking in the road, but at least this time there weren’t fairy footprints to follow.

The tapping of hard-soled shoes kept him aware of Allura, walking sedately several yards behind him. Having company was nice, but having a possible demon lady following his footsteps made him a little nervous. Maybe he’d been a bit over-zealous when he offered friendship, but he kept his thoughts to himself and marched on.

Shiro consoled himself with the fact that she hadn’t seemed outright hostile yet.

 _Yet_.

\----

Even if the sun never set -- assuming there _was_ a sun -- that didn’t mean Shiro didn’t get tired. He’d been walking for what he guessed was about two hours, and everything hurt. His head, his back, his legs. He became aware of his limp when Allura caught up to him and passed him, her stride as long and sure as when they’d started out together.

Shiro plodded along after her, watching the mesmerizing, unwavering pattern of her feet. She was wearing white heels under a long dark skirt, and the rhythm of light and shadow made his brain hurt. At least she wasn’t still leaving discernible footprints, which would hopefully hide their trail better.

But as much as Shiro tried to hurry his pace and keep up, he kept falling farther behind. He really ought to call out to her to slow down, but that would be admitting defeat. Normally he wasn’t too shy about letting people know he needed to take a moment but it seemed a bad idea to show weakness right now. He still didn’t know why Allura was traveling with him, but the last thing he wanted was to appear unworthy of her help.

Still, it was frustrating to listen to her steps drawing farther away, to watch her tall proud figure carry on without any of the pain that mired his own body. It wasn’t like he needed a reminder of how helpless he was regardless of what world he was in.

Allura was now half a block ahead of him, still walking without looking back. Her white hair was exceptionally visible, even at that distance, and as long as the gap didn’t widen, Shiro thought he could keep her in sight. As long as nothing happened...

Even as the thought crossed his mind, a flash of lightning lit up the sky. Vivid purple, the color of the glow on the horizon. Definitely not the color nor intensity of ordinary lightning. But that was all there was to it -- one flash, turning the world technicolor, then back to what passed for normal in the Otherworld.

Except that as he glanced up ahead to see what reaction the flash had gotten out of Allura, Shiro stopped dead in his tracks. She was gone. The road up ahead was open, all the buildings set back across empty parking lots. There was nowhere she could have gone, nowhere she could have run to in the instant that Shiro had been looking at the sky.

Something heavy gathered in the pit of his stomach.

Allura’s intentions may have been unclear, but at least she seemed to be able to handle herself. If anything had happened, Shiro had every intention of hiding behind her for shelter. But now he was once again on his own, closer and closer to the boxy shadow of the hospital against the blood-colored sky.

Ignoring the ache in his legs, he hurried on faster than before. Lightning didn’t have to mean a storm, but he wasn’t taking any chances. The hospital was only four blocks away and there had been no sign of other creatures around. He could do this, he could make it home.

The commercial district ended a block before the hospital. In between there was an empty lot, mostly overgrown with brown shrubs and grass, and littered with trash from the nonexistent population. Beyond that were smaller buildings, offices and whatnot, all a uniform cold gray that matched with the hospital itself.

Shiro’s steps slowed until he came to a stop at the edge of the grass. There wasn’t even a breeze to rustle the bushes and everything was solidly silent. The air tasted like cardboard.

Taking a deep breath, he set one foot forward. His shoe just barely fit between the network of cracks on the sidewalk. Avoiding stepping on cracks seemed like the right thing to do in this world and he wasn’t about to question it.

Carefully he put down his other foot, left, right, left, right.

Something grabbed him from behind, an iron-strong hand over his mouth and an arm around his waist, dragging him inexorably backward. Shiro fought back, throwing his weight from side to side to break free to no avail. Muffled grunts pulled their way out of his throat but were rendered into silence by the hand over his mouth.

After only a moment it was clear that he wasn’t going to get free on his own account so he stopped struggling altogether. Maybe he could lull his captor into complacency and then make his getaway.

“Be still,” a voice hissed in his ear. He knew that voice, that accent, although he’d never heard Allura use a tone so hateful before.

Shiro went still and the hands on him retreated. He was afraid to turn around, afraid of what he might see, but it was only Allura, the exact same as before. She was staring off at the purple area of sky, eyes narrowed and lips pulled back into what was almost a snarl. On her cheeks, the lions glowed unearthly pink.

There was nothing visible in the distance but Shiro hunkered down anyway, dropping to one knee near where Allura was crouched in a fighting stance. He knew better than to ask what it was, so he stayed there until she relaxed somewhat and motioned for him to rise.

“The creatures are hunting. You have to learn to hide or they’ll catch you.”

“It’s harder for me to recognize the signs. I don’t know enough about this world to know when danger’s close.”

“That’s why you need to return to your world soon. I’ve learned how to manipulate this world for my benefit. But you don’t belong here and staying too long could get you trapped permanently.”

Shiro swallowed nervously. “Is that what happened to you? You stayed too long and got stuck?”

“No.” Allura started walking again, rolling her feet this time so her steps were almost soundless. She didn’t pay the underbrush any heed and Shiro could only hope that she knew it was safe.

They reached the first of the hospital’s outbuildings before Allura spoke again. “I ran into the wrong person. That’s what trapped me here.”

The sinking feeling returned, weighing down Shiro’s steps.

“Oh. I’m sorry,” he said at last.

“Sorry?” Allura sounded surprised. “That’s... it’s not your fault.” She paused and waited for him to catch up. “You’re awfully nice, for a lion.”

“A lion?” Shiro repeated, then withdrew the pendant from within his shirt. “I’ll assume that has something to do with this? And the marks on your face?” He hesitated as she leaned closer, reaching out toward the necklace but not quite touching it. “If you’re okay talking about it.”

“Yes, we’re both lions,” she said, attention still on the pendant. At last she stood upright again and looked him in the eyes. “There’s a lot of lore behind it, but anyone who has been touched by leys gains a talisman of some sort. It varies from person to person, but similar leys bear similar marks.”

Nodding, Shiro felt a few more pieces slip into place, but the whole picture was still obscured. “So we became lions through the same means?”

“More likely, to the same end. Although what exactly that is, I don’t know yet.”

“Pidge -- another Alice who I met -- gained a lion tattoo voluntarily. It gives her the ability to cross over without using a rift. Do you think mine does the same?”

Allura shook her head. “Lions are the shape leys take through trauma. Pidge didn’t become a lion voluntarily; no one does. If someone says they ‘gave’ her a lion, they’re lying. Although that does raise the question, why all the same symbol? Why are we all linked together, like parts of something...”

Shiro waited for her to continue but she had fallen into thought and resumed walking in silence. When the sidewalk dipped into the hospital’s shadow, the air turned sharply cold and Shiro hovered closer to Allura. While her aura was just as cold, it was a cleaner kind of cold, like icy glaciers and starry nights. The hospital only felt like cold stone. Like a morgue.

“I don’t know exactly where the rift is,” Shiro said, keeping his voice to a murmur. “Is it a good idea to go in there without knowing where we’re headed?”

“You’re from the other side. Like calls for like. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble getting home, if you can get past the wandering monsters.”

“Yay.”

But Allura held up her hand for silence and tugged him by the sleeve into a sheltered doorway. She pressed up close behind him, pinning him between herself and the clammy wall, and put her mouth near his ear. “From here on, no more talking. If you see the rift, run for it. I’ll help if I can. Good luck, lion heart.”

“You, too,” Shiro whispered back, but Allura was already gone. She was yards away, crouched in the shelter of a different building, alert for anything coming her way.

Shiro sighed and braced himself. As stressful as this whole day had been, he’d hoped that his body would run out of adrenaline and give him an opportunity to focus. But no, Allura’s absence had already made his palms sweaty and his heart race, and the prospect of walking through those huge glass doors was almost more than he could take.

But if he wanted to get home, there was only one path ahead. Steeling himself, Shiro slipped forward along the wall, hoping that he was doing a passable job at sneaking. This close to the prize, all he wanted was to find the rift and fling himself headlong into it. He couldn’t stay still but he had to, even if he had no idea what he was waiting for.

Across the street, Allura waved him on. Shiro sidled up to the doors and pulled one open, stepping inside and hearing it latch behind him.

No way back now. Only forward, into hell.

 


	4. Touched by Tragedy, Part 2

Shiro had spent plenty of time in hospitals, but this was his first time seeing one so silent and empty. It was as if all the people had vanished, leaving their surroundings in mid-action. The waiting room was as forcedly cheerful as any Shiro had seen: fake trees in the corners, a water dispenser that was always out of paper cups, magazines draped over the chairs like people had stood up and dropped them there. There was a light on behind the receptionist’s desk, a computer screen fuzzy with static.

Crossing the room uncertainly, Shiro stopped at the door out of the waiting area. Allura had said that like called to like and he was hoping for some kind of magnetic pull that would direct him which way to go. But even his lion pendant was unresponsive. He tried to take that as a good sign but honestly he didn’t know. Maybe he wasn’t close enough to the rift yet.

He opened the door and braced it as it swung shut with a quiet click. Even that small noise seemed so loud in the white-lit corridor. A main hallway stretched out ahead of him with a smaller hall to the right. Doors were spaced every ten feet or so; most of them were closed, and the few open ones gave glimpses into white, sterile rooms.

He hadn’t come in the ambulance entrance, so he guessed this wasn’t the emergency area. Maybe just a basic clinic? He could deal with that.

Pidge had said that people were dying in here. That meant the intensive care unit, or maybe the ordinary rooms. Shiro guessed those would be closer to the heart of the hospital, several hallways in and floors up. For now, the place seemed deserted so he might as well explore while he had the chance.

He decided on the straight corridor. It would get him deeper into the hospital where he could hopefully find the rift. Although he walked as carefully as he could, it was hard to keep his steps from echoing emptily on the tile floor. But that was good; that meant that he could hear if someone was sneaking up on him. Shiro tried not to think of Allura’s uncanny teleportation and what _that_ could mean if someone wanted to catch him.

As he passed each open room he cast a quick glance inside. Better to scout first than let something suddenly appear behind him. Every room was the same and it was starting to wear on him. The smell of antiseptics and cleaning agents stung his senses and the harsh lighting felt like it was biting into his skin like tiny insects.

There was nothing down here in this ward; he was wasting his time. Yes, he needed to be careful, but searching every inch of the hospital for potential dangers would waste too much time. As long as he kept moving, something was less likely to come across him than he was to come across _it_. Not that he was looking forward to the prospect either way, but this strategy gave him the element of surprise and the chance of a quiet escape.

With that thought in mind, he strode forward faster, sparing only cursory glances to his surroundings as he followed the corridor. It led him through several twists and turns, too many other hallways branching off to keep track where he was. But he wouldn’t need to go back, so he tried not to let it bother him... even when he glanced behind and he could have sworn that the layout was changing every time he crossed a threshold.

_Just keep moving. The rift’s gotta be somewhere ahead._

He kept going, feeling almost hopeful now. All the images he’d conjured in his head were fading away, of grim reapers stalking the halls and carrying off the souls of their victims. The hospital atmosphere itself was unpleasant enough, but Shiro could deal with that. It wasn’t the doctors’ fault that he hated hospitals. They’d done all they could to help him. They were there to help.

Shiro had almost talked himself into a cheerful mood when he turned the corner into yet another long, starkly lit area lined with doors. Only this time there was something on the floor, a patterned line of dark blots that trailed down the pristine tiles.

Shiro took a step forward, leaning closer in the wild hope that his eyes were deceiving him.

The dark marks were pawprints, large and rounded, each as big as his splayed hand. They weren’t made of blood or dirt or anything sinister -- they were just like Allura’s footprints, there without cause or reason. Ethereal darkness that marched away down the corridor. And of course they were headed the same direction he was.

Well.

He gulped.

Allura’s footsteps had looked similarly terrifying at first and she’d turned out to be no threat. This would be okay. Shiro liked dogs... when they were small and relatively harmless.

He needed to go down this hallway. It was either that or go all the way back, far enough that he could start to feel safe, and then try to find an alternate route. But then what were the chances of running headfirst into the dog? If Shiro lost the footprints, he’d have no idea where it was headed.

Too bad the marks didn’t show any signs of shimmering and disappearing. That would have given some indication of how long it had been since the dog passed, but right now it could be just up ahead. No way of knowing.

Shiro stepped to the nearest door and quietly turned the handle. Locked. If he could find something to use as a weapon it would make him feel better. Not that he could do much anyway, but the thought helped.

The next room was unlocked and he picked up an IV stand. The pole unscrewed from the base and left him with a five-foot metal rod, tipped with a pair of hooks. Hefting it in his hands, Shiro headed back out into the hall. The dark prints were still there, the space between them longer than his own stride. So, the dog had been traveling quickly? Maybe it was long gone.

The pole in his hands felt incredibly flimsy as he dragged his unwilling feet deeper into the hospital. But so far there had been no signs of trouble. If he ignored the trail he was following, the hospital was deserted; nothing in the way of him getting to the rift and getting home.

Thing was, how long would he stay home?

Every time he slept, would he wake up in this place? There couldn’t have been any rifts in Allura’s house for him to have sleepwalked through. And without an elevator nearby, how could he have gone from her guest bedroom to the demon-world version of her front lawn?

There had to be some kind of cure for being an Alice. Or maybe, like Pidge had suggested, he ought to handcuff himself to the bed every night. It wouldn’t be pleasant, but it would certainly beat _this_.

Up ahead, there was a four-way intersection. The pawprints continued straight but Shiro slowed down anyway as he approached. Just to be safe, then he would pick up the pace again.

He reached the very edge of the hallway and peered around the corner. On the right there was a short corridor that led to a dead end with a small, narrow window high up. Left was another long hallway, the same as every other one so far.

How big was this hospital? Shiro felt like he’d been walking forever. But the coast was clear, and as long as he followed the trail, he hoped he’d be okay. His hands were sweaty on the pole as he stepped into the open intersection.

The lights flickered and went out, but before Shiro could drop to his knees and cower, they came back on. He spun in place, heart racing, and froze when he caught sight of a shape in the hallway he’d just come from.

Dark. At least chest-height, if not more. He wanted to say that it was a dog but the thought refused to process. No no the head was wrong.

It took a step forward, digging claws into the floor as it dragged the rest of its body like it was paralyzed. Shiro took a matching step back, then another and another as it kept advancing.

Something about its face was all wrong, the glint of black eyes too close to the bottom of the skull. Then the creature opened its mouth, all teeth and _red_ , and Shiro screamed and fled. He dropped the pole with a clang that resounded through the halls like a death knell, and his pounding footsteps echoed out of rhythm.

It had been almost too hard to see, all the black fur blending together, but one glimpse had been enough. The dog’s head was upside down, its neck broken and twisted like the rest of its body. Shiro didn’t dare glance back to see if it was chasing him.

He needed to make sure there weren’t more ahead, needed to find a safe place, needed to get out _get out get out --_

Whipping around a corner, he almost ran face-first into a huge set of metal doors. No time for thought, Shiro pushed his way through and turned to lock them, the bolt settling into place with a satisfyingly heavy noise. No footsteps paced outside, no animal sniffed at the doors or clawed to get in.

He was safe.

He turned around to face a large room, empty save for the metal bed in the center. There were racks on the walls for medical tools but they were all empty now, only neat rows of labels telling what each hook should hold.

Shiro took one step away from the doors but even the thought of the hound couldn’t force him to go farther. This was the surgery ward, the source of so many of his nightmares. Beyond the door on the far wall, there would be another ward just like this, and another, each clean and white. But Otherworld or not, people had died here. So many, that the doctors couldn’t save. There was so much blood on the floor, staining the doctors’ uniforms, only to be washed away and bled out again by the next person.

A sudden blow to the doors startled a noise out of Shiro and he jumped forward. Now there was something outside, heavy breathing and a crushing presence. He thought he could hear the dog whining before it slammed its weight into the doors again, making them rattle on their hinges.

Shiro’s heart raced and skipped as he looked around frantically. There was nothing to block the door with, nothing between him and it except for a locked latch. Crossing the room, he threw open the door to the next ward and plunged through. For now, something more real than nightmares was nipping at his heels.

He paused just long enough to lock the door behind him, then on past the empty bed and into the next surgery ward, lock its door, then the next...

Shiro’s hand was inches from the handle when he heard footsteps just outside. Not a four-beat gait, but a person running hard. He dodged to the side, pressing himself up against the cold wall, just as the door was flung open. A small figure darted past him, a blur of chestnut and green, and Shiro’s breath caught in a moment of hope.

“Pidge?” His own hoarse voice startled himself, and caused the newcomer to leap back with a shout of surprise.

It was Pidge, mussed up and panting hard. She staggered for a moment on tired legs and motioned quickly to the door. “Block it up, the king’s coming!”

“We can’t go out the other door. There’s a hound chasing me!”

Pidge gave him a wide-eyed stare, a look of fear that he’d hoped never to see on her face. As Shiro hurried to lock the door -- and listened anxiously for sounds of snuffling coming from the other one -- Pidge was already yanking open the door to the supply closet.

“Come on, hurry up. Have they got your scent?”

Shiro didn’t bother answering her nonsense questions. What had him more concerned was the confined space of the closet, yawning dark in front of him. It was the first unlit area in the whole hospital and there was no way he was going in there, trapped until the dog found him and dragged him out.

Pidge reached out and grabbed his sleeve, pulling him inside with strength fueled by adrenaline. Lights came on automatically as she started climbing the shelves inside, reaching toward a... trapdoor in the ceiling?

“Gimme a boost!” Pidge shouted and Shiro stepped forward, letting her climb on his shoulders and pull open part of the ceiling. A slim ladder folded down and Pidge caught it, already at the top by the time Shiro started climbing.

“Maintenance shortcut,” Pidge explained. She must have been feeling more in control of the situation if she was taking time to explain things. Shiro took that as a good sign, that they were almost out of the woods.

“Any idea where the rift is?” he asked. The ladder had opened up at the end of a short hallway and up ahead were more lights and doors.

“Yeah. But there’s no way you can use it. I couldn’t even get close, it’s so bad.”

“Then how’d you get here? How were you planning to escape?”

Pidge scowled at him but the look was mixed with concern. “My tattoo. It lets me open rifts, remember? But only for myself. I came through to look around and then I was planning on getting myself out of here.”

Shiro swallowed and tried not to think about how infinitely screwed he was.

“I’m going to stick around here for a bit longer,” Pidge said, as if that was any consolation. “I don’t think they’re tracking me just yet.”

“The dogs?”

“The hunter king. And yeah, his dogs.”

Shiro helped her settle the trapdoor back into place; the little aluminum latch holding it shut looked pointlessly flimsy. “I’m guessing he’s not on our side?” If the dogs had looked like that one glimpse he’d seen, then Shiro never, ever wanted to see the dogs’ master.

“He’s an aberration.”

“What else was I expecting.”

“But what doesn’t make sense is why he’s here. He’s supposed to haunt old forests. He can only be summoned with like, deer entrails and stuff. There’s no reason why he’s in a hospital!”

“Does anything in this world make sense?” Shiro asked, wondering when it would be the right time to mention meeting Allura’s doppelganger. Pidge would probably kill him for talking to an Otherworlder.

Pidge led the way down the corridor, not bothering to look around as she headed for a closed door at the very end. “There are _rules_ for this kind of stuff,” she hissed. “This is the Otherworld, but rituals and laws don’t change! That would be like gravity turning off just because you crossed into a different country, or something.” She pushed open the door into a dimly lit waiting room. “Believe me, aberrations and entities like them are absolute sticklers for rules. It’s the only thing that’s kept them in line. They have to use rifts, they can only come when summoned, on and on and on.”

Shiro shut the door, unsure if he should lock it. Pidge seemed to not care, as her voice had gotten louder during her rant against the world. Hopefully she knew something he didn’t, and the coast was clear.

“The hunter king only comes for people lost in the woods, that sort of thing,” the girl continued. She was now pacing the room, arms crossed and face scowling. “He wants to chase people who can run, not hospital invalids.”

“Maybe his big demon boss ordered him to?” Shiro said, mostly joking. His unease was still present and he strained to hear claws clicking across the tiles outside.

When he looked up, Pidge was staring at him with an expression caught between eureka and horror.

Shiro gulped. “What?” He glanced quickly behind himself. “Did I grow horns all of a sudden?”

“Big demon boss is a definite possibility,” Pidge said faintly. She sat down on one of the blue plastic chairs. “Really bad possibility.”

“The Emperor?” It seemed likely, given the name, that if anyone was at the top of the Otherworld hierarchy then it would be him. Shiro started to get a sinking feeling.

“What’s that?” Pidge asked. She was looking at him with honest curiosity and a touch of puzzlement that he knew something she didn’t.

“Um...” How to explain without telling her that he’d talked to a possibly malicious clone of Allura? “It’s just a name I heard somewhere. He’s behind all the bad stuff going on, the eternal sunset and stuff. If he’s coming closer and disrupting the normal flow of things, then maybe he could be driving other aberrations out of their normal habitats?”

“Maybe. That sounds about as right as anything I know about this world.”

“I thought Allura taught you a lot? You’re really good at this Alice stuff.”

Pidge crossed her arms and sank deeper into the chair. “She only tells me the important stuff I need to know to survive. I get the feeling she knows a whole lot more than she’ll ever say, but I don’t understand why she’s so close-mouthed about it.”

“There are other people we could talk to,” Shiro suggested. The Otherworld Allura wasn’t exactly the friendliest person he’d ever met, but she seemed more talkative on certain subjects than the real Allura.

“Like who? The Blade? Aberrations? It’s not like the Otherworld is common knowledge.”

“I might know someone.” The words slipped out before he thought about what he was saying.

“Oh yeah, who?”

“Ummm. A... demon lady. Who looked like Allura.”

The chair scraped along the floor as Pidge jumped up and braced herself in front of him, eyes blazing behind her glasses. “You talked to Otherworlders,” she said flatly.

Shiro’s stomach curled in on itself; if it sank any lower, it would exit his body and disappear into the floor. “Yeah. But I didn’t have a choice! I was lost and didn’t know what to do. She seemed like she knew the way around, and it turned out well in the end. She’s the only reason that I made it here to the hospital at all.”

“Do you just make a habit of ignoring people’s instructions when they’re trying to save your life?”

“I’m sorry.”

Pidge turned away, her face still angry, and ran a hand through her hair. “I’m trying to keep you alive here,” she said, and her voice was very much not angry. She sounded on the verge of tears, the words catching and hitching in her throat. “I don’t want to lose you too.”

Nodding, Shiro sank down to one knee. “I don’t want you to lose anyone else, either. I honestly thought I was doing an okay thing.”

“Don’t apologize now.” She was still facing away, one hand holding her glasses while the other rubbed at her eyes. “You’ve already gone and done it.”

“Maybe something good can come of it,” Shiro persisted. “I mean, I heard of the Emperor, so maybe that information can help us? And there’s... other stuff, too, that I need to tell you when we’re out of here.”

“If you can still get out of here,” Pidge said.

Shiro turned his face away. That had been his fear all along. Pidge knew more about this stuff than him; if she thought he might be trapped here, then he probably was...

“Sorry.” The word was so soft he barely heard it. Pidge moved to stand in front of him but Shiro couldn’t bring his gaze up from her boots. _Trapped_. The word echoed inside his head.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m sure we’ll find a way out.” A tentative hand rested on top of his head, awkwardly petting his hair.

“But you’re not wrong,” Shiro said at last. “This place does have rules. Rules that ought to keep me trapped here, and ought to keep the king in the forests. Maybe something else is going on here.”

When he looked up, Pidge had replaced her glasses and was looking calculatingly at the door, all traces of her tears gone. “That’s definitely a hypothesis worth testing later. Right now, we’ve still got to figure out how to reach that rift.”

Oh yeah. The rift, currently guarded by dogs-that-weren’t-dogs and a king who hunted people. And who knew what else.

“Could you give me the elevator numbers again? I can trek back to the apartment building; it’s a long way, but it’s probably safer than --”

“Shh!”

Shiro froze at the same moment that Pidge motioned frantically for silence. He’d heard it too: heavy breathing. _Sniffing_. Just outside the door.

Pidge inched her way to the exit on the far wall and peeked through the small window in the opposite door.

“All clear,” she mouthed.

Shiro nodded and followed her closely, opening the door just enough for them both to slip through and then easing it shut.

“I know where the rift is,” Pidge said. “You any good at running?”

“You really think we can make it?”

“Not we. Just you. I can draw them off then use my tattoo to get out, meanwhile you’ll slamdunk yourself into the rift. But you’ll have to be quick; not all creatures here are dumb enough to follow me.”

Hesitating, Shiro considered his options. There weren’t many, and only one ended with him getting home. His legs were tired from the long walk here, but with the right amount of panic and adrenaline, he should have at least one sprint left in him.

“Yeah.” He looked her in the eye. “I can do it. Ready when you are.”

Pidge’s steely smile mimicked his own and she stood a little straighter. “All right, soldier. Let’s march.”

\----

Shiro lay on his belly on the floor and tried not to think about how easy of a target he currently was. Pidge was several yards ahead, scouting the mezzanine that overlooked a fountain and indoor lunch area.

Voices rose from the ground floor, mutters and whispers like he’d heard on the elevator. Every once in a while he thought he recognized a word or two, but they didn’t make sense and he tried not to concentrate on them. He needed to keep a clear head if he was going to get out.

Pidge scooted her way back to him. Her face was grim but as she caught Shiro’s gaze, she managed an encouraging nod. Whatever tatters of their courage were left, it seemed, were feeding off of each other to stay alive. He gave her a thumbs-up and hoped he looked ready for this.

“The rift is right here,” she whispered, once she was close enough to press her mouth to his ear. “It’s in the pool. Looks like oily water. All you have to do is jump in -- from a height that won’t break your legs or kill you.”

“So I have to make it down the stairs and across the floor,” he muttered.

“Mm.”

“How many critters are down there?”

Pidge’s shoulders twitched in a shrug. “Lots. Don’t look at them and don’t let ‘em grab you, and you’ll be fine. Just focus on the fountain and that’s all.”

She started to inch away, pulling one leg under her to stand. “And don’t make friends with any of them!” she added as an afterthought.

Shiro started to say something but she was already standing upright and moving to the edge of the balcony. Now or never. He felt his whole body grow tense and his breath caught painfully.

The voices below rose into a screaming crescendo as Pidge raced along the balcony and down the adjacent hall. Shiro stayed where he was, pressing his chest to the floor and wishing for invisibility. Footsteps pounded up the stairs, too many to count, and chased Pidge. Now or never.

Shiro waited just long enough for most of the footsteps to pass before he lurched to his feet and ran onto the mezzanine. Down below, he caught a wild glimpse of dark shapes milling around a wide fountain.

 _All_ he had to do was get to the rift. And avoid being eaten in the process.

He took the stairs quickly, clattering steps echoing his chaotic heartbeat. Once on the ground floor, he dodged something with two legs that belatedly lunged at him from under the stairs, and ran as fast as he could toward the fountain.

It seemed like almost everything had followed Pidge, and he had a moment of fear for her. Then something congealed up off the floor, a black puddle forming into a tall and formless pillar. Another one rose up next to it, and three more on the far side of the fountain.

Growling came from behind him.

Shiro didn’t bother to look any closer. He’d failed Pidge’s instructions before, he couldn’t fail now.

The fountain was five yards away, its surface roiling with colors.

Something looped around his left leg and dragged him backward, flailing, off-balance. He shouted but there was no one there to help, and prying at the cold mass wrapped around his leg only trapped his hand, too.

He couldn’t die like this! Reaching out with his free hand, he grabbed onto a folding chair and tried to swing it at his attacker. But his right hand refused to cooperate, fingers slipping weakly from the metal, and he screamed at his own helplessness.

Another weight landed on his lower back, wrapping clammy tendrils around his stomach. It started dragging him backward, Shiro’s palm squeaking against the tile floor as he fought for anything to hold onto. The growling was louder, right on top of him, and pricks of pain shot through his calf as claws punctured the skin.

In a last move of defiance, Shiro curled his right arm over his head, shielding his neck as best he could, and waited for teeth to sink into him. But just as he swore he could feel hot breath on his skin, there was a noise like thunder and the floor shook under him. The claws tore down his leg and he couldn’t tell the creatures’ wailing from his own but for the moment, the weight on him was gone.

His vision shifted and there was movement all around him, sudden shapes that lunged and darted in combat with the aberrations. The air felt different too, suddenly cleaner and less like he was breathing dust and sediment. A taste of the real world?

Shiro lunged to his feet and threw himself at the pool, still a good twenty feet away. He was so close, so close that the worlds were blurring and he didn’t know which one he was in.

A dark figure danced across in front of him, ballet-like in its movements. And surprisingly human? Shiro slowed his momentum enough to avoid collision. At the same time, he realized that his ears were no longer being assaulted by the muttering and whispering of the faceless crowd. Instead, there were shouts and calls for backup, the grating sound of a blade against concrete, and rattling shrieks that faded quickly to silence. More human shapes whirled and dodged in his peripheral vision, but Shiro didn’t stop to look closer until he’d reached the safety of the pool’s edge.

The water looked cleaner than it had from the balcony; there was still an oily sheen to the surface, but it was transparent enough to see the pennies scattered at the bottom. In fact, as Shiro cast a hurried glance around the entire lunch area, things seemed a lot different than they had been moments before.

The blob creatures were still there, but they seemed more translucent now. Like gray gelatin, wobbling and oozing away from the much more solid human figures. Humans who were attacking the shadows. Driving them back and chopping them up into pieces that faded into black steam.

Shiro dug his fingertips into the cement edge of the fountain and tried to calm his breathing. Was this the real world again? Had he somehow made it through the rift? But he’d never reached the pool!

There was noise behind him and a shockwave crashed from the fountain, knocking him flat to the ground. A slimy mass gripped the edge where Shiro’s hand had just been. Something pulled itself up out of the water, large enough to be silhouetted against the ceiling lights. Shiro, down on his back, pushed himself backward away from the thing until his shoulder collided with a table.

No, not a table. The obstacle moved and he looked up into the twisted face of a hound, its neck broken like the other one, saliva drooling past its eyes.

Shiro barely had time to gasp for air, certain that he was looking death in the face, when the hound was gone. A white light had flashed through the air, quick as a falling star, and the creature was in two pieces on the tile, body slowly disintegrating into nothing.

“Come on!” an unknown voice shouted, and a strong hand pulled Shiro to his feet. It was one of the humans helping him up; as soon as he’d caught his balance, the newcomer yanked him along, farther to one side while the creature in the pool bellowed its rage.

“Thanks,” Shiro gasped.

His savior didn’t answer, instead looking back at the monster and raising his sword in defiance. The blade glimmered unearthly pale, blue-white and intense. It was the only part of the stranger’s outfit that wasn’t swathed in black. Black hoodie with deep purple trim, black bandanna obscuring the lower part of his face, black hair, eyes that sparked an alien purple.

Shiro’s heart flipped and sank as he realized who had saved him. The Blade. The ones that Allura had warned him about. The ones that would tear him to pieces if they found out he was an Alice.

“Stay out of the fight,” the stranger said. Shiro nodded mutely. “Try to stay alive.” Then he was off, rejoining the group of black-clad fighters that hemmed in the pillar of ooze in the pool. All the other creatures were gone, the last vapors trailing away into nothing. The white swords did their work well; even the barest touch of them seemed to burn the Otherworld creatures.

Shiro inched backward, taking note of his surroundings until he could safely wedge himself between an sprawling fake tree and the wall. Maybe the Blade had the right idea. Destroy everything touched by the Otherworld, before it had a chance to spread and infect any more lives. If they’d been here sooner, maybe all the people in this hospital wouldn’t have died while he and Pidge scouted vainly for a solution. The thought planted itself in Shiro’s mind and pricked at him as he watched the coordinated attacks of the Blade render the imposing blob dead in minutes.

Even if he had scouted and found the rift, even if Pidge and Lance had thought of a way to seal it, what would they have done when the monsters attacked? None of them were skilled in combat. They would have had to abandon the field, leaving the hospital defenseless until... what? Did Allura have some secret weapon that he knew nothing about?

That only made his thoughts circle back to the other Allura, the one from the other side. Could _she_ have helped with any of this? And what about Pidge? Where was she?

Shiro pushed himself away from the wall without thinking. What if she hadn’t made it out in time? He needed to go find her!

But before he could get more than five steps, one of the Blades was back, pulling him to lean against the wall. Shiro thought it was the same one from before -- he had the same eyes -- but there was no telling. They all wore masks and his first impression had been fleeting at best.

“Just wait here,” the Blade said. His voice was trying to be gentle but his words were clipped and cut short by pain.

Shiro reached out to him on instinct, helping him down to sit on the floor with his long legs stretched out. Crouching next to him, Shiro now noticed the trio of scratches across the Blade’s thigh, deep and red with sluggish blood.

“I’ll stay with you,” Shiro said, then bit his tongue. Maybe if he was nice to the Blade, then they wouldn’t lop his head off for being an Alice.

“Thanks.” The stranger reached up and snagged off his bandanna, revealing a face not much younger than Shiro himself. “By the way, I’m Keith.”

“Shiro.”

Neither of them seemed interested in shaking hands. Keith rested his head against the wall and let his fingers play with the sword at his side.

“Quite a fight,” he said at last, drawing Shiro’s attention back to him. “It’s a good thing there were enough of us here. Not everyone thought this was worth --” He stopped and rubbed the back of his neck.

“So you’re not from this town?” Shiro asked. He knew that some secrets shouldn’t be brought up, but he was honestly curious. Even if the Blade turned out hostile, knowing about them could be useful.

“I am. Was. I’m not really from anywhere, actually. Being an orphan and all. The Blade kind of picked me up and I stuck with them.”

“Oh.”

“By the way, thanks for saving me.”

Keith lifted one shoulder in a tired shrug. “That’s my job.”

“Right. Right. Saving ordinary people, killing anything that’s different.”

“What made you think we’re all about killing? Besides the carnage surrounding us.” Keith waved a hand at the overturned tables and chairs, at the other Blades nursing their wounds.

Shiro felt his mouth turn down, about to argue and potentially dig his hole deeper, when someone shouted his name.

“Shiro! You here? You okay?”

“Pidge!” He stood up and waved her over. She was standing on the stairs, leaning on the rail as she surveyed the room with trepidation. Seeing him, she hurried over, giving the Blades a wide berth.

“You made it!” Shiro said, reaching out and pulling her in for a peremptory hug. “I was worried for you.”

“Nah, it was nothing.” Pidge ran a hand through her sweaty hair and pushed her glasses up on her nose. “I mean, it could have been better if you hadn’t been an idiot, but hey. At least we’re both alive.”

“You weren’t scared of the aberrations?” Keith asked from his place on the floor.

Pidge swallowed visibly and edged around to put Shiro between herself and Keith. “I’m not scared of anything.”

Keith chuckled but let the subject drop. He rested his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. “Wake me up when the medics arrive.”

Wrapping her fingers in Shiro’s sleeve, Pidge tugged him off to the side, all the while keeping her eyes on Keith. “You probably shouldn’t be talking to the Blades.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Just because Pidge knew her way around, Shiro was coming to realize, didn’t mean that she knew everything. Because he’d talked to pretty much everyone he’d met, and nothing bad had happened yet.

...well, bad was relative. Ignoring the fact that he’d just escaped certain death in a haunted hospital, only to somehow cross over into the midst of a battle in the real world, and he was possibly now wanted for being an Alice... okay, maybe things were pretty bad. But it wasn’t because he’d talked to people.

“Anyway,” Pidge continued, still looking put out, “I’ve already called Lance and Hunk. Hopefully the Blades will have moved on by the time they get here. We need to seal this rift before any more nasties come leaking through.”

“You think it’s safe for them to come here? I mean, the Blades might notice them. Or what if more stuff _does_ come through the rift; how are we supposed to fight it off on our own?”

“We’ll be fine,” Pidge answered, but she shifted her weight uncomfortably from foot to foot. “The Otherworld just got its ass kicked, so maybe it’ll stay quiet for a while. Figures, the Blade was actually good for something. But I do need to warn Hunk to be careful.” She moved farther away, out of earshot of Keith, and dialed her phone.

That left Shiro to stand watch over Keith, shifting uneasily the more he thought about his predicament. He wanted to make sure the Blade was okay, but every moment he stayed, he recalled Allura’s warnings and made himself more nervous.

To keep himself occupied, he settled down against floor and searched his pockets for a handkerchief. The wound in Keith’s leg didn’t look that serious on closer inspection, but was smeared with dark goop that stuck in bubbles and strings around the torn flesh. Shiro wouldn’t have been surprised if it was poison.

“Hey, Keith?” There was a fluttering of eyelashes but no response. Shiro tapped his shoulder to wake him up.

Almost instantly, Keith jolted awake, the sword rattling against the floor as he grabbed for it.

“Sorry, sorry.” Shiro raised both hands, pulling back to give Keith breathing room.

Keith set down his blade and rubbed at his face. “I was expecting a monster,” he mumbled, voice still bleary.

“No monsters here except my ugly face.” Shiro sat down and nodded toward Keith’s leg. “You should probably stay awake until the doctors get here, just in case.”

He looked up and Keith was looking back at him, strange purple eyes unreadable.

“I don’t think you’re a monster in any sense of the word,” Keith said quietly, and Shiro couldn’t help the way he inwardly flinched. Yeah, like this guy knew anything. Who was he to judge right from wrong?

Shiro waved it off with a gruff thanks but the words did soothe one of his worries. If Keith couldn’t tell offhand that Shiro was an Alice, then maybe there was a chance for Shiro to make it out of this hospital in one piece after all.

“Anyway,” Keith continued, leaning his head back and closing his eyes again, “I should be fine. This is barely a scrape. But thanks for thinking of me.”

Shiro gave a shrug that the other man didn’t see, and pulled himself to his feet. He couldn’t catch sight of Pidge amid the Blades and the paramedics timidly filtering into the room. Might as well stay here until someone came to care for Keith. As much as he still feared what the Blades could do to him, it didn’t sit right with Shiro to leave someone to fend for themselves. And who knew, if he could do enough to strengthen his new friendship with Keith, maybe he wouldn’t have a white-bladed sword at his neck one day.

Through the crowd, he thought he caught a glimpse of Hunk’s bright yellow shirt, and a moment later his thoughts were confirmed when he saw Lance meandering his way toward them. Shiro stood up, a greeting on his tongue, but Lance was quick.

“Your hands,” the Elf said impatiently, stopping when his cane touched Keith’s outstretched legs.

“What?” Keith and Shiro asked together. Shiro stepped forward quickly, half holding out an arm to keep Lance from tripping over the Blade’s legs. At least Keith was looking confused instead of hostile, his sword untouched by his side. It would be a small blessing if he never figured out he was facing an Alice and an Elf.

“Lance, what’s going on? You’re here a bit early.” Shiro looked around quickly for Pidge, but she was talking to Hunk over by the fountain, and wasn’t any help.

“Your hands,” Lance said again, clapping his hands together sharply. He dropped to one knee and reached out toward Keith. “Now.”

Keith looked at Shiro and raised an eyebrow, but he could only shrug in response. “Your friends are weird,” Keith said, extending his hand toward Lance.

Lance was muttering to himself in Spanish as he traced Keith’s hand, front and back, tan fingers lingering on his palm. “The other,” he demanded, swiping at the air when Keith didn’t offer it fast enough. He did the same again, feeling every angle of Keith’s hand before dropping it in exasperation.

“What’s going on?” Shiro finally asked. He nudged the fallen cane toward Lance’s searching fingers.

“It’s all wrong,” Lance said, still not really talking directly to him. “That feeling, remembering something that hasn’t happened yet. Deja vu?”

By now both of Keith’s eyebrows were raised. “You’re having deja vu involving _my hands_?”

Lance stood up and wiped his palms on his jeans. “I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

Shiro shifted, making enough noise to remind Lance of his presence before laying a hand on his shoulder. “I guess it’s been a pretty long day for you too. Do you need me to help with... anything?” He didn’t want to ask about the leys by name, not in earshot of Keith. But didn’t Lance have a job to do? Shiro glanced over uneasily at the fountain, remembering the tower of darkness that had risen from it not long ago.

“I’m fine.” Lance shifted his cane to his right hand and stuck the other in his jacket pocket. “Were you scouting here with Pidge?”

“Yeah,” Shiro said. How evasive should he keep his answers? “Then I met up with Keith here and --”

Lance startled, the cane clacking against the floor as he jolted in surprise. Shiro took half a step back, hands up defensively. What now?

“Keith?” Lance echoed, the name grinding on his tongue as a shadow fell over his face, blanketing his surprise with fury. “Keith Kogane?” His blind glare was fixed on the floor by Keith’s right hand.

Keith glanced to Shiro for explanation but only got a confused shrug in response. When he tried to shift to the side, away from Lance’s radiating malice, the Elf’s gaze redirected itself to his face.

“You know me?” Keith asked, tone neutral. “I don’t think we’ve met before.”

“ _Know you_ ,” Lance growled between his teeth. “Do I know you?” He leaned forward, gesturing to his face, his eyes, and snarled, “I swore I’d never forget your name. How dare _you_ forget _me_? You’re the one who did this to me, you’re the one who took away my sight!”

Keith lurched to his feet but stayed close to the wall, bracing one hand for support. “I have no idea who you are, and I certainly never did anything to you. You’ve got the wrong person so just leave me alone before you make a scene.”

Lance choked at that, inarticulate fury staining his face, but Keith’s passive tone was final.

“I know it was you,” Lance muttered. “You son of a bitch.”

But to Shiro’s relief, Keith stayed quiet instead of lashing out in turn.

“I told you, you’re mistaken. Now go away unless you want the Blades to come ask what’s up.”

It was true, the Elf’s outburst had attracted a few curious stares around the room. Even though Lance was shaking with anger, he seemed to sense the potential danger and swallowed his words with difficulty.

“I won’t forget,” Lance said, cane aimed at the floor like a spear. “I won’t forgive.” He whirled away, shoulders taut, and stalked off toward the sound of Hunk’s voice over by the fountain.

Shiro turned to Keith, a horde of new questions on his tongue, but the Blade sank down slowly to rest on the floor again. Clearly whatever had happened -- misunderstanding or not -- was a volatile topic. And as much as Shiro wondered at their history together, he could force his speculations aside for the moment. Right now, the rift was the most important thing; after it was dealt with, then there would be time for questions.

Feeling Keith’s eyes on him, Shiro tilted his eyebrows up in what he hoped was a placating expression. “I have no idea what that was about. I promise he’s a nice guy.”

This time it was Keith’s turn to shrug. “I’m kinda used to people hating me, once they find out I’m in a gang. Although I’ve got to say, this is the first case of mistaken identity. I feel sorry for him; I hope he gets justice for what happened.”

“Yeah,” Shiro answered. He wasn’t sure how he felt at being left out of the loop on that detail of Lance’s life. Maybe it was none of his business, but someone could have warned him...?

He stayed by Keith’s side even as he watched the agitated conversation between Pidge, Hunk, and now Lance. He really ought to be over there with them -- wasn’t he part of the team now? -- but he didn’t want to just walk off on Keith.

Sinking down against the wall, Shiro gestured at the sword still resting by Keith’s side. “A bit old fashioned, isn’t it?”

Keith picked it up, tilting it so the blade caught the light in a brilliant flash. “It’s made of meteoric steel. Metal from the heavens. It’s pretty much the only thing that can damage the creatures you saw earlier.”

“And that’s your job? Killing monsters?”

“Keeping the world a safe place for ordinary people.”

“How can you tell the difference between ordinary people and monsters?”

Keith set down the blade and looked at Shiro very seriously. “It doesn’t work that way. There’s a lot more to my job than just fighting.”

“Hm.” Shiro took a breath and decided on the path of honesty. This had been bugging him for too long; he might as well get an answer if he could. “Someone broke into my apartment earlier. Slashed it up with a knife. I’m trying to figure out why.”

But Keith was already shaking his head. “If you’re thinking of blaming the Blades, you’re barking up the wrong tree. If we were told to target you, we wouldn’t destroy your property. It’s more likely someone heard we were in town and decided to use that as an excuse for vandalism.” He paused. “I’m sorry though. You didn’t deserve that.”

“Yeah.” Well, that was one weight off Shiro’s mind, and a different one added on instead. Who else knew the Blades were here? Who else would want to hurt him and force him out of his home?

“Looks like the medics finally noticed me,” Keith scoffed, hauling himself to his feet and bracing a hand on the wall. “You’d think we were miles from the nearest hospital.”

“Can’t blame them for being scared to come in here,” Shiro said. He offered his hand to Keith but the Blade waved him away and insisted on standing on his own.

“I’ll be fine now. Just gotta get patched up a bit and then I’ll be back to hunting down monsters.” He gave a small grin. “Thanks for staying with me. You’re surprisingly hard to scare off.”

“Maybe I’ll see you around?”

“Maybe. Just try to stay away from bubbling ooze monsters, okay? I’d rather meet you again in one piece.”

“No promises.” Shiro meant it as a joke, but the words turned sour in his mouth. “See ya.”

\----

Lance wasn’t looking any happier by the time Shiro joined the group in their secluded area near the fountain. Hunk looked dour, too. Pidge was preoccupied with her cell phone but looked up in relief when Shiro approached.

“Any luck sealing the rift?” Shiro asked, keeping his voice down. The Blades were still milling around, as were several harried-looking nurses.

“We’re working on it,” Hunk replied. Lance didn’t exactly look like he was marking out leys; he was sitting on the edge of the fountain with his arms crossed and his face turned away, but Shiro decided not to comment.

“I’m glad you made it out okay.” Shiro rested his left hand on Pidge’s shoulder. “It was incredibly brave of you to lead them off like that.”

Pidge shrugged it off and looked over Shiro in return. “Glad you’re here, too,” she said. “Although wasn’t the rift in the fountain?”

“Yes?”

“So why aren’t you wet?”

Shiro took a moment to look down at himself questioningly. “I should be wet?”

“If you came through the rift. In the fountain. You should be wet.”

“I never made it to the fountain.”

Even Hunk paused at that, looking up at him sharply. “So... if you never crossed through the rift, how are you here?”

Shiro blinked at him for longer than strictly necessary. “Maybe...hmm. Maybe the rift has an area of effect?”

Abruptly, Pidge stood on tiptoes and snagged the collar of Shiro’s shirt, pulling it down far enough to see the lion pendant.

“Hey!” Shiro twisted away, one hand on the necklace protectively.

“Did you use that to cross over? Without even using the rift, like me?”

“No! I don’t know!” Shiro frowned at her. “I don’t know how to cross over, with or without a rift.”

“How’d you even get to the Otherworld in the first place?” Pidge asked, leaning into his space again. “I thought you’d know not to play with elevators any more.”

“ _I don’t know_.” Shiro swept a hand through his hair. “How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t intend for anything to happen, it just _does_. I went to sleep at Allura’s, then woke up in hell. I only made it all the way out here because...” He swallowed. “...because of Allura.”

“Explain?” Pidge held up her hand to forestall his exasperated gestures. “As much as you’re able. Please explain.”

“There’s not much to say. I met Allura in the Otherworld and she showed me the way to the hospital. I mean, she wasn’t exactly like the Allura I’m used to, but she seemed friendly and it turned out all right in the end. So maybe she wasn’t all bad?”

Pidge looked to Hunk for support. “Talking to aberrations traps you on their side, right?”

The big man raised his shoulders in defeat. “I’ve never crossed over. I have no idea. But yeah, that’s what Allura has always told us.”

“How are you even still here?” Pidge shook her head at Shiro in wonder. “You’ve broken every rule I’ve told you. Hell, you’ve broken rules I _haven’t_ told you, like you have to use a rift to cross over.”

Shiro opened his mouth to reply but Lance’s harsh mutter cut him off, clearly heard even though he was several feet away.

“Is he even on our side at all?”

The conversation died down after that. Hunk nudged Lance until he got out a chalk pencil and started tracing out the leys only he could see. Pidge went back to staring calculatingly at her phone, although Shiro noticed her sneaking glances at him occasionally.

After a while, Pidge retreated to an alcove with a single table and pair of chairs, and quietly motioned him over.

“I think you have every right to be part of the team,” she began. Shiro nodded along, even though he had no idea where this was going.

“But there are precedents for a reason. Allura set up rules and they aren’t to be questioned. She taught me how to be an Alice and her rules have kept me safe all this time. How to cross over, not to talk to people, to fear the Blade. But you’ve followed none of her rules and things go generally okay for you, right?”

“I don’t know if okay is the word, but I’m not dead yet. So maybe I’m just lucky.” Shiro leaned across the table toward her. “Or maybe the rules are wrong.”

Pidge frowned at that, but she didn’t tell him to stop.

“The Allura I met in the Otherworld felt different. I’m not a good judge of these things, but when you first met the real-world Allura, did something feel off to you?”

“No. Don’t try to turn me against her. She took me in after my dad died, and she’s been nothing but helpful.”

“I wasn’t saying that. I was just saying, I always get queasy in her presence. But this other Allura, the mirror one, she felt powerful too, but in a different way. The same level of danger, but directed outward, not toward me.”

“Look, I’m fine questioning a few things. I do wonder sometimes how Allura gained all her knowledge. But you’re contradicting everything that I’ve ever heard about the Otherworld, and I’m not going to take that kind of risk.”

“But you admit there’s the possibility of things being off?” Shiro persisted. “If Allura has any reason to be dishonest to us, or simply not telling us the whole truth, we ought to find things out for ourselves. We need to talk to other people before we accept every word from her mouth as fact.”

“That’s not the point here. You can question Allura all you want, on your own time.” Pidge put her phone in her back pocket and stood up, effectively ending the conversation. “But if all you’re going to do is disobey and break rules, and try to undermine her authority, then Lance is right. You’re just a drag on the whole team.”

Shiro stood up slowly too, careful to keep his distance. “It’s fine if you won’t listen to me. But you need to see the other side of things for yourself. I want you to meet Allura. The Otherworld one.”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“It needs to happen. Best case, you get to prove your point to me and I’ll shut up. Worst, you learn a lot of new stuff and have to re-evaluate. So why not ask someone who knows how the Otherworld works? I’ve already talked to her and I was still able to come back, so you don’t need to worry about being trapped.”

Pidge shook her head, but she was chewing her lip nervously.

“Think of all the stuff going on that you couldn’t explain,” Shiro persisted. “My sleepwalking. The hunter king in the hospital. Me not using a rift.”

“I don’t think Allura is the problem.” Her honey eyes were cold when they met his gaze. “I think you are.”

Shiro’s breath caught. “I’m only suggesting an alternative!”

“Our solutions have worked just fine so far. You’re fouling up the team and trying to drive us apart. We don’t need you around if you’re not going to help.”

Shiro clenched his fists and barely restrained himself from shaking Pidge by her shoulders. “Please believe me. I believed you when I thought you were crazy, talking about mirror worlds and demons and rifts to other dimensions. Give me a chance. You don’t even have to talk to her. I’ll do all the talking. I want answers as much as you do, and this is our chance to find out!”

“No.”

“Please --” This time he reached out and Pidge stepped quickly back.

“I think you should go.”

“Go where?”

“To Allura. The real one. Either tell her you’re ready to follow rules and be an Alice, or say goodbye and get out of our hair. It’s been nice knowing you, but some partnerships are meant to be short.” She turned away, toward Hunk and Lance at the fountain.

A frustrated tear ran down Shiro’s cheek; he hadn’t realized when he’d started crying. “All I’m asking is this once, just...”

“No.” Pidge started walking and didn’t look back. “Hey, Hunk, any luck with the rift?”

Hunk put a hand to the back of his neck. “It’s doable, but it’ll take some time to seal it. I need to go back to the construction site and get some stuff. Want me to pick up lunch on my way?”

And just like that, Shiro felt a chill run through him as the three turned their backs and carried on the conversation in low voices.

Why couldn’t Pidge trust him, this once? Why wouldn’t she open her mind?

...

Did he really belong with them at all?

But if he ought to be alone, what about the lion that rested heavily on his chest, the one that crouched in ink on Pidge’s arm, the ones that blazed on Allura’s cheeks? He couldn’t walk away now and leave so much completely unanswered.

 


	5. The Empress, Part 1

Shiro left the mezzanine area, feeling as useless as the medics still milling around with worried faces. Most of the Blades were gone now, either carted away on stretchers or seeming to have vanished before the police showed up. The officers didn’t do much, cataloging the damage and asking few questions of those present.

It was as Pidge had said -- the police didn’t pay the Blades any special attention, instead treating them just like ordinary civilians. It made a nagging doubt blossom in the back of Shiro’s mind; maybe the police had nothing against the gang because they’d never done anything wrong? But all the warnings of the Blades waiting to cut Alices to ribbons... were those no more true than the rest of Allura’s rules?

At the very least, the police’s limited involvement made it easy for Shiro to slip away unnoticed. Pidge, Hunk, and Lance were still working by the fountain and were acting as if they’d forgotten his very existence. It could have been worse; they could have been actively hostile, trying to force him to confront Allura. Even thinking of it put a stone in Shiro’s stomach.

The two Alluras that he’d met were so subtly different. Something was wrong, one of them wasn’t who she said she was. But which one? And how to find out? And what to do when it came to light that one of them was lying? But lying meant that one of them -- or both -- were aberrations. The thought chilled him, lurking in the back of his mind like a stalking predator.

Shiro strode through the halls, not really paying attention where he was going. Sooner or later he’d come across an exit sign and get out. Then it would be a long trek back toward his apartment, but at least this time there wouldn’t be dead silence and fear breathing down his neck. Hopefully.

Out of the corner of his vision, lights flickered and went out. He startled and jumped aside, back pressed flat to the wall and wide eyes staring down the side corridor. There was no dark shape at the far end. There were no dogs in this hospital. Just a power surge, nothing more.

Still, a chill traced down his spine as he turned his back on the darkness and hurried down the echoing hall. Up ahead, there was the cheery red glow of an exit sign and he pushed through the door gladly, breathing in a lungful of the cool outside air.

It was early dusk, the sky just beginning to tint red and purple as the sun’s glare was hidden behind the buildings. Still bright enough to see easily, but enough for the temperature to start falling. Shiro didn’t mind; he still had his jacket, and the air felt good prickling against his skin. Cleansing, almost.

The exit door had opened into a narrow alley between two of the hulking hospital buildings. To the right was a chain link fence, cordoning off the utility systems, and to the left was a paved path that looped around and made a turn down another alley. Even though the outside of the hospital was as much of a maze as the inside, it was still preferable, and Shiro found his posture relaxing the farther he walked. The shadows out here didn’t seem nearly as threatening as the darkness that lurked inside.

That was until he heard a desperate scream, loud and pained and heart-stopping in the silence.

It trailed off into nothing, echoes bouncing off the concrete and dying again.

Shiro was torn between staying right where he was, shielded on two sides by the buildings until he was sure the coast was clear, and running to help. This was the real world, he reminded himself harshly. Someone was clearly hurt.

But _what if_ his treacherous mind kept whispering, even as he forced himself to put one foot in front of the other. _What if_ the Blades didn’t kill all the aberrations that had leaked through. _What if what if what if_ \--

Moving cautiously, he approached a corner and peeked around. The voice in his head went silent at the sight of Keith braced against the wall, whimpering and curling in on himself in pain.

“What happened?” Shiro asked, coming closer. He didn’t expect an answer to his question, but it was the easiest way to announce his presence and hopefully avoid a panicked sword swing.

But as he got no answer and came closer, he saw that there would be no swords any time soon. Keith’s knees had all but given out under him and he seemed to be pinned to the wall. His right arm was stretched up, fingers bent limply around a double-edged knife driven into his palm.

“Holy shit.” All fear fled Shiro’s mind as he hurried to wrap an arm around Keith’s waist, holding up his weight and taking the strain off his bleeding hand. “Take it easy. Keith, you with me?”

The Blade only groaned faintly and let his head loll against Shiro’s shoulder. There was a crimson stain growing on the wall, running in thick rivers down the concrete and staining the sidewalk. Shiro shifted so his left side was taking most of the boy’s weight, and reached up with his right hand to tug at the knife. It didn’t budge, feeling like it was part of the wall itself.

Shiro readjusted his grip, wrapping numb fingers around the hilt as tightly as he could force his muscles to go, but there was still no change. Keith’s fingers twitched and a new gout of blood ran over his black glove and dripped to the pavement with a hollow sound.

“Help!” Shiro returned both arms to supporting Keith while he looked around. Only the bare walls faced him, gray concrete and brick as dead as the Otherworld. No one was around and the silence felt like it was crawling on him.

“Hang in there,” Shiro muttered, even though Keith looked pale from shock and too dazed to be fully conscious. He grabbed his phone and unlocked it with shaky fingers, leaving dull smudges of blood on the screen that obscured the numbers he tapped.

“911, what is your emergency?”

Shiro’s eyes wandered as he spoke, forcing himself to look at Keith’s hand to assess the damage. “My friend’s hurt. We’re in the alley by the ambulance entrance. It’s not life threatening,” he told the dispatcher, “but please hurry.” _There’s no excuse for you not to_.

But as the phone line shut itself off, his gaze remained fixed on the broad blade protruding from Keith’s hand. A bright cold light enveloped the hilt before fading and condensing into a very familiar design. A faintly glowing lion, crouching, paw raised.

Shiro ducked his head so he could glimpse Keith’s face, but the younger man had closed his eyes and was breathing shakily. A lion? Why had Keith been chosen? His mind wheeled with questions. Shiro tapped at his phone again and called Pidge almost out of instinct.

“You’ll want to get out here,” he said as soon as she picked up. “Alleyway outside the ER. I just found another lion. He’s been... attacked by someone.”

His blood ran cold at the thought and he lowered the phone despite Pidge’s urgent demands for explanation. Someone had been here, had taken Keith unawares and incapacitated him. What chance would Shiro stand against someone who could do that?

His senses were tuned to high alert but there was no sign of life in the immediate area. Several yards away, an exterior heating unit trailed steam into the air, the vapor drifting in the air before slowly dissipating. Still, nothing out of the ordinary.

That didn’t quell Shiro’s nervousness, his back pressed to the wall and his shoulder aching under Keith’s dead weight. He sighed in relief when two paramedics hurried around the corner with a stretcher. Pidge was trailing not too far behind them, her face set and businesslike.

“We’ll take it from here,” one of the medics said, moving to support Keith. His partner reached up to remove the knife, but despite his best efforts, it remained lodged in the wall. He frowned and tried again, and this time the resulting trickle of blood was dark and sluggish.

Pidge and Shiro were pushed aside as more paramedics arrived and clustered around Keith.

“Did you see it? On the knife?” Shiro asked, turning his eyes away from the scene with a wince.

Pidge nodded and chewed her lip. “Thanks for calling me. This is definitely something important.” She reached for her phone but Shiro held out a hand to stop her.

“I know you need to tell Allura about this, but maybe just wait a moment? Hear me out, please.”

“We’ve been over this already,” Pidge sighed, looking away. “You’re not happy -- I get that -- but this is my job...”

“The Otherworld Allura said that lions are manifestations of ley lines. They’re created for a specific purpose. Maybe this is a sign that we ought to all stick together?”

“You, me, and a Blade? I don’t think so. We have nothing in common.” But she seemed to be wavering, her hand no longer inching toward her back pocket. “Still, what purpose could we all have together? I was only given my lion so I could scout for trouble.”

Shiro took a deep breath. “I’m sorry for asking this, but did you actually _get_ your tattoo? Or was it just there one day?” _Like how my pendant was in my hand at the wreck. As if it materialized at the same time as my scars._

“It... I don’t remember how I got it. But after Dad and Matt died, I was pretty messed up and don’t remember a lot anyway, so that’s not proof of anything.”

“I think Allura has been hiding things from us, from _you_ , for a long time. Like the Emperor. If he gets here and finds a rift he can fit through, it’s going to be hell on earth, and she somehow didn’t think that was important enough for you to know?”

Pidge cut him off. “Maybe she didn’t want to worry us. She has been working to close all the rifts, so you can’t say that she wasn’t aware of the danger.”

“She just didn’t trust you enough to tell you.”

“To be honest, I’d rather _not_ know that the crawling chaos is trying to break into our world,” Pidge said. “Ignorance would certainly help me sleep better at night.”

“But you’re out there on the front lines! Don’t you think you, an Alice, ought to be fully informed about what you might be facing on your Otherworld missions?”

“Whatever you’re driving at, give it up.” She crossed her arms and focused her attention elsewhere.

Shiro ran a hand over his face, letting his fingers brush over scar-roughened skin. Behind him, Keith had finally been freed from the wall and the paramedics were hurrying him into the hospital. “You’re an Alice because you want to help people, right? Save the world, that kind of thing? Maybe you should think whether you’re really doing that, or if you’re blindly doing whatever Allura tells you to. She knows a lot, I’ll give her that, but what are _her_ intentions? She’s never really seemed like the humanitarian type.”

“Fine.” Pidge raised her chin and stared him down. “I’ll talk to her myself, later. I want to know what’s going on with the lions, that’s for sure. Because if she didn’t give you yours, then where did it come from and who’s deciding we belong together? But right now I need to finish up here with Hunk and Lance.”

“Thank you.” Shiro dropped his shoulders and felt a wave of relief come over him. “I just --” _I want you to open your mind. I want you to be on my side. I want to be a part of this team, not a weight or a drag or an unwanted part._

But whatever he was going to tell her got cut off by a panicked yell. They looked up to see Hunk standing in the doorway of the ER, hands on his knees as he panted for breath.

“It’s Lance!” he got out between gasps. “I looked away for a moment and he fell into the rift!”

“What?!” Pidge was already halfway to the door, Shiro not a step behind her. “How could he have --”

“I don’t know. I think one of the Blades may have pushed him. Or he slipped. I don’t know, but he’s gone.”

Shiro came to an abrupt halt as it felt like he’d run into a wall of ice. He tried to shake off the feeling but tendrils of fear wrapped around his throat and pulled tighter with every step toward the hospital.

“I knew we should have sealed it sooner,” Pidge muttered, walking fast. “He’s never crossed over before so he won’t know what to do.”

“Think you can get him out?”

“Of course.”

Hunk sped up his steps and Pidge matched the pace without a backward glance. Shiro could feel himself shaking, legs becoming unsteady, and he slowed down. By now the other two were out of sight around a corner, footsteps receding quickly. Once Shiro was alone, he staggered against the wall and braced himself there, trying to calm his frightened heartbeat as his pulse dinned in his ears.

Hunk’s words... how had Pidge not noticed? There was the slightest trace of Allura’s foreign accent in his inflections. And his gaze had felt like a knife, sharp as crystal when he’d glanced back.

Shiro forced himself to take a deep breath, and then another. The last time he’d convinced himself he was imagining things, it had turned out to be all too real -- the Otherworld was no joke, nor were the uncanny things that lived there. He wanted to believe that he was over-stressed and seeing things, hearing things, but his gut advised otherwise. There was still a cold tremor in the air, a half-felt ache that soaked into his bones and swirled inside his mind.

Something wasn’t sitting right, and he grit his teeth and pushed away from the wall. Whatever it was, he wasn’t going to leave Pidge to face it on her own. Her life was far more important than any fear that gripped him and wouldn’t let go.

But as he neared the fountain area again, the chill came back. Shiro walked softer, afraid of what was going on ahead. There was only silence, suggesting that the Blades had all finally left; he could only hear the faint splash of water, but even that seemed dull and muted. _Like in the Otherworld_ , came a whisper from the dark corner of his mind.

When he got close enough to see the entire room, Shiro was wordlessly grateful for his caution. Pidge was nowhere in sight -- presumably on the other side of the rift -- but Hunk was busily moving around, his steps jerky with haste as he traced razor-thin lines around the concrete basin of the fountain. He, too, was dead silent as he worked; only the scratching of the metal pen barely whispered through the room.

Shiro pressed himself closer to the doorframe, watching in confusion as Hunk made a full circuit and finished his nearly invisible inscription with a flourish.

There was a muttering underfoot, some great power shifting, and the noise from the fountain returned full force. Shiro’s eyes widened at the changed atmosphere in the room. For the first time since he’d set foot in there, the hospital felt _safe_. The only twinge he got was from Hunk’s presence, but the rest of the room was clean and alive again.

It took him a moment to realize what he had just seen. By that point, Hunk picked up the duffel bag he and Lance had brought and he was starting to walk toward the exit on the far side of the room.

The rift was sealed.

There was no way for Pidge and Lance to return.

And it was all Hunk’s doing.

\----

It took Shiro a long time to think of what to do next.

There weren’t many options that he could think of, short of running home and burying himself under the blankets until he could convince himself this wasn’t real. Only wait, that wasn’t an option either, as he remembered the destroyed state of his apartment.

There was absolutely no way he was going back to Allura’s house, not to sleep, not to talk, not to do anything. He was going to stay far away from her, and even farther from Hunk’s new terrifying aura as well. It was clear that whatever was going on with Allura had touched Hunk too, or at least that was how Shiro interpreted the nausea whenever he glanced out at the fountain.

The hospital was still quiet and homey-feeling. With no link to the Otherworld, things were returning to the way they should be.

Shiro sat on the floor and considered his options. Hunk and Allura were out of the question, and Pidge and Lance were unreachable. What could he do on his own? Searching out a rift and trying to rescue them could result in him getting trapped as well. Pidge could use her tattoo to escape, but there was no way she would leave Lance behind.

He really wanted to talk to the other Allura now and ask her for help, but crossing over was impossible. For a brief moment Shiro contemplated falling asleep there in the hallway and _hoping_ he would sleepwalk his way into the Otherworld. Other than that, his friend list was woefully short, and there were even fewer people who knew of the Otherworld and whom he felt were at all trustworthy at the moment.

Maybe he could break the seal on the rift and re-open it. With Hunk long gone, that was probably the easiest option to try, although Shiro felt trepidatious about possibly releasing more horrors into the real world.

There was always the option of waiting for Pidge to find an elevator that would help her and Lance cross over. But not just any elevator would do; as far as Shiro knew, the only one that worked that way was in the apartment building near campus. It would take hours for Pidge to reach that with Lance in tow, and he didn’t want to think of what could happen if they got attacked by aberrations on the way. Better to open the fountain rift again and give them a quick way home.

He hurried to the fountain, keeping his steps light just in case. There didn’t seem to be anyone else in this wing of the hospital for now, but he couldn’t shake the fear of eyes watching from the shadows. Up close, he could see the wavy line scratched into the concrete and he set about defacing it. But although he used a metal chair to scrape off part of the design, the water didn’t change back to the oily sheen. The air stayed clean and fresh and he gave up at last, putting down the chair and slumping into it.

It looked like once a rift was sealed, it was sealed for good. Or maybe he just didn’t have the knowledge of how to break it open again.

His eyes roved over the fountain and down to the patterned tiles on the floor. There were scratches there too, long gouges that had bitten into the faux marble. Marks of the battle between aberrations and the star-forged swords. The Blades! Shiro doubted he could count them as friends, but maybe one of them wouldn’t kill him outright if he asked for help. Keith was his only recourse right now.

Luckily Keith was already out of surgery by the time Shiro got directions to his recovery room. Shiro knocked lightly on the open door and Keith looked up from where he was sitting on the bed staring at the lion knife. His right hand was heavily bandaged, his arm in a sling.

“Hello,” Keith said as Shiro pushed the door mostly closed.

“Hey. I hope you’re going to be okay.”

“I’ll be fine. Just another scar for the collection.” He shrugged and put down the knife, touch lingering on the lion emblem.

“Sorry,” Shiro started, but didn’t know what more to say.

“Doesn’t matter.” Keith pulled himself more upright and gestured to the chair by the bed. “Have a seat if you want. Or did you just come to check on me? I thought you were with me earlier but I’m not sure.”

“I was there. I found you pinned to the wall. What happened?”

“Thanks for helping me,” Keith said. His eyes were sharp on Shiro, shrewd and careful. “I’m not really sure who stabbed me; they came up from behind. I don’t recognize this knife, either, but it feels... significant.”

“I might be able to shed some light on that. But in return I would like your help. I’m in a very bad place and you’re the only one I can think of who might know something useful.”

Keith gingerly shifted his arm in the sling. “ _I’m_ the only one who can help?” But aside from looking surprised, he seemed open to the idea, and listened intently as Shiro explained everything.

Everything from his car wreck and the mysterious pendant, to his sleepwalking, to him meeting Pidge and Allura and joining their team. He gave minimal explanation to his missions as an Alice, hoping that Keith would assume he’d only crossed over by accident, but he needn’t have feared. Even when Shiro mentioned meeting the other Allura in the Otherworld, Keith’s expression didn’t change from one of curiosity and mild concern.

If any of Allura’s words had been false, Shiro was intensely glad that she’d lied about the Blades’ bloodthirst.

Keith only interrupted a few times, asking for Shiro to repeat a point or clarify details; for the most part he listened in silence, nodding his head at certain points. When Shiro ended with a desperate plea to do _something_ about breaking open the nearby rift, the Blade rubbed his good hand over his face and took a breath.

“This is some really heavy stuff. I’ve been on the outskirts of the supernatural before, but now, if I’m a lion, I’m right in the thick of it.”

Shiro gave a halfhearted chuckle. “I’ve always known I was in over my head too. But I thought I had a fighting chance until now. All I wanted was to figure out my sleepwalking, not get dragged into... whatever this is.”

“A battle several decades in the making.”

“What?”

“I don’t know all the details because I’ve never been on the front lines before, but this fight has been going on since I was a child. It’s old news that the Emperor is coming. The Blades were formed years ago to make sure that the day never came when he would break through into our world. We’ve been working in secret for a long time, mainly because the Blades’ early ranks were infiltrated by an Otherworld spy.

“It was before Kolivan adopted me, but from what I know, a lot of people died. Both Blades and civilians. Someone managed to turn the public against us and we were run out of town in fear for our lives. Since then, things have calmed down over the years, but we suspect whoever massacred us before is still around. It could very well be linked to what you’ve seen and experienced.”

“Who could possibly want the Emperor to succeed?” Shiro had to admit that it made too much sense to dismiss. Why kill the Blades, who were working to seal the rifts, unless the end goal was to keep a rift open for the Emperor to bring the apocalypse? But as the thought crossed his mind, Shiro shuddered. Even something as malevolent as the Emperor was bound to have followers, worshippers, people who _wanted_ to watch the world burn.

“It could be someone from the Otherworld,” Keith said. “There are ‘people’ over there too, not just hellhounds and formless aberrations. They’re smart enough to cross over through any open rifts, and imagine what it would be for them if the Emperor came -- their world would dominate the humans. They wouldn’t be exiled to that empty hellscape any longer.”

“The other Allura I met. There’s a chance she was one of the Emperor’s minions?”

Keith groaned and put his head back. “There’s a chance for anything. I don’t have any kind of special sight so I can’t judge people, but I’m willing to bet my sword that one version of her is fishy. Which one, I have no idea.”

“I could go confront her,” Shiro said, sounding reluctant, but Keith was already shaking his head.

“And if it turned out she was the bad version, she’d be more than a match for you. For both of us, with me in my current state.”

Shiro looked up, brow creased in surprise. “I wouldn’t ask you to come with me.”

“I’m volunteering.” Keith swung his bare feet off the bed and stood up. “As a Blade, it’s my duty to keep this world safe. And like you pointed out, I now possess a lion so I’m part of whatever is linking you and your team together. I’ll do what I can to help.”

Shiro wanted to protest more; Keith wasn’t up to fighting in his condition, but nevertheless it made him feel much better to know there was someone competent at his side. Together, their chances of survival should be at least a little bit higher.

“Thank you,” Shiro said. He stood and reached forward as Keith picked up his jacket and sword belt, but the Blade waved him off.

“I can do this,” Keith muttered, and Shiro backed up. He needed to give Keith space and trust him, if they were going to survive the Otherworld together.

“Any ideas how to break the seal?” Shiro asked at last as Keith checked over the last of his belongings.

“We don’t. I mean, we could, given the right equipment and time, but your story gave me a better idea.” Keith fished in his jeans pocket and tossed over a key ring. “You any good at driving a motorcycle?”

Shiro caught the keys and bounced them in his left hand. “You might have to give me a few pointers. Where do you have in mind?” _Please don’t say what I think you’re going to_.

“The forest rift. Where you had your accident.”

\----

Keith’s bike was long and sleek, black and chrome with thin red stripes gracing the body. But for all its size, it handled like a dream, needing only a light touch to guide it around curves and down side streets toward the warehouse district. Even Keith’s weight clinging to Shiro’s back didn’t throw them off balance as much as Shiro had feared. It was something of a confidence boost, a thrill of fun adrenaline, that overrode some of the growing apprehension.

But all that enjoyment fell away as Shiro cut the bike’s speed to a crawl as they entered the forest shadow. It was even darker under the trees than before, now that nightfall was imminent. Closing the rift may have dissipated some of the fear, but Shiro’s own memory supplied more than enough to make up for it.

“You okay?” Keith asked, raising his voice above the purr of the engine.

Shiro nodded jerkily and gave the motorcycle a bit more gas, lurching it forward in fits and starts. Simply being on this road was one thing, but _driving_ it again was a nightmare.

Still, Pidge and Lance needed him. If he and Keith couldn’t make it in time, then their lives could be lost and it would all be his fault. For as much as Shiro was terrified of what could happen to himself, he was more scared for his friends, and this was the closest rift to the hospital. So he kept the bike moving as fast as he dared, braking hard on the curves and straining his eyes for the sign post.

There it was, up ahead, the edges of it white against the dusk.

He pulled up short several yards back and took the keys from the ignition. Keith let go of his one-armed grip around Shiro’s waist and swung off the bike.

“I’m gonna need your hands again,” he said, injured hand tucked in its sling inside his jacket. At the base of the signpost was a small patch of fresh dirt, loose topsoil that had been dug up recently.

“That’s the seal?”

“Every rift has to be sealed in a different way. That’s what Elves are for.” Keith crouched down and scooped out a handful of dirt. “Dig up whatever’s buried here, and that should be enough to break open a rift as small as this one.”

“Great. I get to be the one to re-open this can of nightmare fuel.”

“It’s far better than the alternative,” Keith pointed out, wiping his fingers on his pants.

Shiro set to work, moving the dirt aside and trying not to think too hard about what kind of stuff might need to be buried to seal a rift. Just because Hunk and Pidge had been the ones to create this seal not too long ago didn’t mean anything when it came to occult ingredients...

“Oh.” He pulled out a small glass marble, shiny red despite the dirt.

“There should be four more,” Keith commented. He reached down and poked around, pulling out a blue and a green marble. “We need to get them all out to make sure the rift is as open as possible.”

Shiro lined up the marbles along the edge of the hole: red and blue, green and yellow, and a sparkling black.

“You sure this is all of them?” He looked down into the small hole and picked at the dirt under his nails.

“Yeah. Five is the magic number for a lot of things. Besides, can’t you feel it?”

Sitting more upright, Shiro paused as the underbrush around them rustled and then went still. The shadows were almost black now, Keith’s face dim in the fading light, the motorcycle nothing more than a faint gleam of silver. There was definitely a more sinister tinge to the air now, the same as it had been before the seal. The same as it had been in the Otherworld hospital. Stale, cardboard, dead.

The rift was open.

Shiro stood up and turned around, peering into the woods. As much as he didn’t want to see the eyes again, he was looking for the oily sheen of the rift. But there seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary, not like back at the fountain.

“You coming?” Keith’s voice came from back at the motorcycle.

“Yeah. Where exactly are we going?” Shiro asked as he tried to slow his powerwalk toward the Blade. Even in Keith’s injured state, he was still probably the better of the two if something attacked from the underbrush.

“Into the rift. I’m guessing you were really close to it when you had your crash, so I need you to steer us there.”

“I uh, ended up pretty far from the road. We’ll have to walk.”

Keith shook his head and Shiro’s stomach dropped. “If we want to get back to the hospital in time to find your friends, we’ll need the bike with us. Don’t worry, it can survive rift travel just fine,” he added, mistaking Shiro’s increasingly worried expression.

“Let me get this straight,” Shiro said, wrapping his fingers around the handlebars but standing off to one side and not getting on the motorcycle. “You want me to drive us off the road, aiming for the exact spot of the accident that almost cost me my life?”

Keith opened his mouth and shut it again, visibly slumping in on himself. “Okay, sorry. I wasn’t thinking of it that way; I’m sorry. Would it be better if I drove?”

Shiro eyed Keith’s hand, half expecting a red tinge to be showing through the bandages. While it would be easier to let Keith take over, so all Shiro had to do was close his eyes and pretend to be elsewhere, he couldn’t just back out of this responsibility too. At some point he had to face the past and beat it. No more letting old fears rule his life.

“No,” Shiro said, surprised at how steady his voice was. “I’ll do it.”

Keith raised an eyebrow at the sudden change, at the note of resolve in Shiro’s voice, and gave him a small smile. “I knew you had it in you. Now let’s go save some people.”

Key back in the ignition, the bike idling under him, Shiro took only a moment to close his eyes and breathe deeply. He hoped Keith knew what he was doing, blindly trusting to drive off the road and into the invisible rift. And once on the other side, who knew what was waiting for them?

But the Blade seemed calm. He loosened his sword in its scabbard at his back, then returned his arm to hold tightly around Shiro’s waist.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Keith said, picking his feet off the ground. Shiro balanced them for a moment before kicking up the stand and letting the bike roll forward.

“Does speed matter?” he had to ask. The engine groaned at being held back.

“We only need to go fast enough to move,” Keith replied. Shiro let out the clutch a bit more but kept the bike in neutral. “Keep it slow and it’ll be fine. The bike’s pretty good on uneven ground so there’s not much to worry about.”

_Yeah, except for trees and vultures and cracked windshields. Totally okay._

Shiro held his breath and the motorcycle rolled forward, the slight downward slant of the road providing the only acceleration. They passed the road sign with a snail’s speed. He’d never be ready for this moment again, not in a dozen lifetimes. Still, Pidge and Lance. They needed him.

Once they passed the sign post, Shiro turned the bike to the side, easing off the shoulder of the road with a thump and crashing into the underbrush. Brambles dragged by, thick thorns that caught and ripped at his pants, and still the motorcycle crawled forward. Inexplicable fear washed over Shiro and he reached for the brake, but before he could engage it, a wave of utter cold washed over him. Against his back, Keith shuddered and gripped tighter.

The air was different again, the sounds of the motorcycle muffled even though it was still vibrating under him. Shiro lurched to a stop, trembling. The trunk of a giant tree loomed over them, a yard away but far too close for Shiro’s nerves.

“I think we made it,” Keith said. Instead of raising his voice, he leaned closer to Shiro’s ear and kept his voice as low as he could over the ambient noise. “This doesn’t feel like the real world any more.”

Shiro’s hands were clammy with sweat as he turned the bike around and maneuvered them back to the road. There weren’t any specific signs that indicated they were in the Otherworld now, but Shiro had felt the same crawling sensation on his skin often enough that he knew.

“Yeah,” he said at last, throat dry as the bike coasted toward the tunnel of red sunlight that marked the exit to the forest. “Yeah, we crossed over. Now comes the hard part.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me at [impendingexodus.tumblr.com](https://impendingexodus.tumblr.com/)!


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